Looters trash museum's treasures

The world's first written words may have been lost forever. After surviving for more than 5,000 years, distinctive clay tablets that are recognised as the root of all mankind's written communication have either been destroyed or stolen in yesterday's looting of the Iraqi national museum.

The tablets, from the royal tombs at Ur, were among 170,000 items taken from Baghdad's National Museum of Antiquities. Experts claimed that the stolen goods were worth billions of pounds. Others maintained that they were 'priceless'.

In addition to the tablets containing cuneiform writing - which utilises symbols chipped into the clay using wedge-shaped tools - thieves also took some of the world's earliest examples of mathematics. These include calculations that have directly led to the modern system of timekeeping using hours, minutes and seconds based on the number six.

'This is a tremendous loss to world literature and knowledge, it's truly a world heritage loss,' said Dominique Collon of the Ancient Near East Department of the British Museum.

A massive collection of 5,000-year-old 'highly breakable' sculptures from ancient Sumeria and Assyria have also been stolen from the world's seventh largest museum.