From the Ashes

Slowly, the damage wrought by Nazism and World War II is undone:

When an incendiary bomb hit in World War II, Berlin's Tell Halaf archaeological museum went up in flames and its 3,000-year-old statues were smashed to smithereens.

It has taken nine years of piecemeal work, but 60 artifacts have now risen again, phoenix-like, from 27,000 fragments of stone found in the ruins. The ancient treasure -- monumental deities from Aramaean civilisation and relief slabs depicting hunting scenes -- will soon be back on public display.

A century after it was first discovered in the Syrian desert and nearly 70 years after its bombed and broken shards were dumped into crates and buried anew in the cellars of Berlin's Pergamon Museum, the story of its salvation is itself an unlikely tale.

"We have reconstructed more than 90 percent of the artifacts from the Tell Halaf museum," said German archaeologist and restoration manager Lutz Martin, 56. "Of the 27,000 pieces, there are only 2,000 left over" that could not be fitted back.