A Museum for the World 給全世界的一個博物館

By Jim Muir, BBC Correspondent, Baghdad

媒體英語會帶大家一起學習BBC撰稿人在報道世界大事時常用到的單詞和短語。

Background: 背景：網絡巨頭 Google 宣布從2010年1月起將會將伊拉克國家博物館的寶藏的照片放在互聯網上供全世界人民免費觀賞。Google 首席執行官 Eric Schmidt 先生在參觀伊拉克國家博物館時宣布了此消息。

The Iraqi National Museum was heavily looted in the immediate aftermath of Saddam Hussein's overthrow in 2003. Thousands of priceless items were stolen. About one third of them have been retrieved.

The museum itself has been renovated and reactivated. Three times over the past six years, its reopening has been announced, most recently in February this year. But the security situation has never been stable enough for it to reopen its gates fully to the Iraqi public - only a limited number of its galleries have fully been restored.

Much of the restoration work has been sponsored by the Italian embassy, and the Italian National Research Centre is already running a ‘Virtual Museum of Iraq’ on the internet, showing many of the artefacts of ancient Mesopotamia. But Google, with its vast resources, is now planning to make a wider range of pieces available to a bigger public.

From January, around 14,000 images will be available on Google, charting the course of civilisation in Iraq from the Stone Age through Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian and later times up to the arrival of Islam. It won't be quite the same as visiting the museum and seeing it all for yourself. But for the time being, for most people, that's not possible anyway.