A DRAMATICALLY illustrated manuscript that will go on show this weekend in the Turks exhibition at the Royal Academy may put our invasion of Iraq into perspective. A copy of the Zafarnama, a book proudly recording the conquests of the Mongol warrior Timur (or Tamerlane), shows him taking Baghdad some 600 years ago. He all but sauntered in, apparently, on an August afternoon when the heat was so sweltering that the city’s defenders had propped up their helmets on sticks behind the ramparts and bunked off home.

Timur was characteristically savage. He demanded that each of his soldiers should bring him a head. The waters of the Tigris, one miniature records, ran dark with blood as archers pierced frantic citizens swimming for safety. When the massacre was over, some 90,000 skulls were piled in towers on the desert plains.

But the flipside of such destructive ferocity was the creative ambition of a conqueror who aspired not simply to rival, but to surpass his predecessor Genghis Khan. Timur’s artistic patronage produced one of the most splendid epochs of Persian culture. So what are the coalition forces leaving behind?

A report presented a few days ago by John Curtis, Keeper of the Department of the Ancient Near East at the British Museum, is shaming. Responsibility for the remains of the ancient city of Babylon is returned to Iraqi authorities, with a legacy of damage. Babylon was the once splendid capital of a great kingdom and the site of the Tower of Babel. Its Hanging Gardens were one of the world’s seven wonders. Throughout history it has lived in legend and imagination, fabled for its luxury, beauty and sensuality as well as some intriguing pagan practices.

The city was only rediscovered by archaeologists in the 19th century. Now a few months of war have wreaked irreparable damage on millennia of history. In April 2003, the Americans established a military camp amid Babylon’s ruins. Initially, its presence served a purpose. It deterred looters. But the camp soon expanded and spread. According to Dr Curtis’s report, commissioned by the Iraqi Culture Minister, hundreds of thousands of square metres of gravel were laid down, allowing small chips to work their way ever more deeply — and inextricably — into archaeological deposits. Long trenches were dug, and fuel supplies leaked. Earth bearing traces of ancient civilisations was excavated to fill sandbags. Bricks, inscribed with the name of Nebuchadnezzar were prised out, probably for souvenirs. And the dragons which decorate the Ishtar Gate were chipped. Such desecration is an offence to the world, whose civilisations were cradled in this region, as well as to the Iraqi people for whom Babylon has become an invaluable tourist site.

The Polish, the most recent occupiers of the base, have vociferously denied fault. But that is not the point. “I was never intending to apportion blame,” Dr Curtis told me yesterday. “Military authorities were probably as careful as they could be. What is lamentable is that it was so unnecessary in the first place.” The military should not have been camping on a site of such historical importance.

• THE ROYAL ACADEMY exhibition presents a priceless collection of treasures. The difficulties of displaying such pieces are well known. Carpet experts, alone, were at work for weeks, unrolling their woven paragons of Turkic craftsmanship and restitching them to canvas backings. But when the sculptor Richard Wentworth brought a rolled object into Tate Liverpool this week, you might have thought it would be simpler. It was only a bale of hay — the sort of thing that can safely be left out in a damp field all winter. But I flicked through a file that detailed all the potential problems. They ranged from the risk of arson and the peril of harboured pests to the hazard of spontaneous combustion. Extra fire extinguishers have been installed. Probes monitor any rise in heat. Flame retardants and insecticides have been sprayed. The last art work that proved this problematic, a Tate worker told me, was a goldfish in a glass case (by Jannis Kounellis). It caused endless concern. Anxieties were registered. The RSPCA was called. But what had most annoyed her, she laughed, was the idea that the public were worried about a fish with a three-second memory, but not about the staff who had been trapped in this glass bowl for years.

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