“This is a crime, not just against the Iraqi people”, Donny George, the museum's director of research, said on April 29th, “but against mankind.” Distressed at the lack of protection afforded Iraq's museums by British and American troops, despite clear warnings that looting was likely, Iraqi curators are now collaborating with the British Museum and UNESCO to strengthen the legal framework that regulates the antiquities trade. A special motion was submitted to the UN Security Council on April 30th to retain sanctions on cultural artifacts coming from Iraq. Earlier, Tessa Jowell, the British culture minister, confirmed that the British government would “endeavor to strangle the market for tainted Iraqi property” by pushing through legislation that would make trading in illicit antiquities a criminal offence. Meanwhile, Mounir Bouchenaki, an assistant director-general of UNESCO, wants to establish a heritage police force for Iraq and has asked Interpol to police Iraq's borders for stolen antiquities. But keeping a vigilant watch over the market and reporting the sale of items suspected to have been looted may, in the long run, prove far more important. The museum in Baghdad is still without electricity, which has made it difficult to assess exactly what has been taken, especially from the store rooms in the basement. Meanwhile, a photographic database of the pieces already known to be missing is being established with the help of UNESCO and the British Museum. Archaeologists like piecing together shattered worlds. They will need more than their usual patience to rebuild Iraq's magnificent ancient collections.

Artist says British Museum does not know left from right.

The argument now is over whether the British Museum knows its elbow from its armpit. As international controversy rumbles on over future of the marbles, the new bones of contention are in a shattered fragment of a 2,441-year-old arm. Fragment 331 came to the British Museum almost two centuries ago, as part of the Elgin marbles. The museum believes it is a left arm, probably part of the depiction of the goddess Iris.

Richard Divers, a graphic designer and art director, claims it is a right arm, possibly from the great central section of the west pediment, which was hacked out of the monument not by Lord Elgin, but by the Christians who converted the temple to a church 1,500 years ago. If he is right, the museum has been labeling and displaying the arm wrongly for at least a century. The museum says he is wrong but has agreed to bring a cast of the arm from a museum store so that it can be examined from all angles. The museum will also see if the piece matches the figure of Iris. The whole argument turns on an armpit. "It cannot be a left arm," Mr. Divers said. "Down is not the same as up, however much you want it to be." Curator Peter Higgs said: "We have had a close look at the piece and still believe that it is a left arm. There is an area that must be armpit that was not easy to see while the sculpture was on show in the display case. This seems to clearly make it a left arm."

"That is not an armpit," Mr. Divers said. "They have mistaken the little depression between the tendons behind the arm for the armpit itself. It is a right arm. It won't fit the figure of Iris because it doesn't come from that figure." Mr. Divers gave his drawings of the fragment to the British School in Athens, which gave them to an expert on the sculptures, archaeologist Olga Palagia, who found his suggestion plausible. A vital key to the puzzle of the marbles is a watercolour by French artist Jacques Carrey in 1674, before the explosion in 1687 which shattered the artwork. Mr. Divers believes the arm could be a fragment of a sculpture of the goddess Athena, to whom the temple and the city were dedicated. Mr. Higgs still insists the museum label on the fragment is correct. But he said an international project was being considered, to scan in three dimensions all the known and possible fragments from the Parthenon, so the puzzle might at last be fitted together.-Mev Kennedy.