The Looters by Harold Robbins Page A

was in the front of the house and considered the focal point, would have looked much better in a cathedral.
    Naturally, the house was called the Rose House… although people in the neighboring mansions called it a gaudy eyesore.
    The word was that Hiram III wasn’t displeased when the place burned down ten years ago. What he constructed in its stead was not a home but a museum.
    The Piedmont Museum was designed to look like a box—or, more accurately, a series of square boxes. From the outside it was all straight lines. Hiram’s theory was that if you made it in the shape of a box, you wouldn’t be restricted in how you filled the interiors. He was right. He wanted a “theme museum,” and the boxed shape permitted him to design the interior without posing any restrictions from the exterior.
    The neighbors were unanimous in their opinion again that the new house was worse than the old—at least the old one had Sophia’s exuberant bad taste going for it.
    In discussing acquisitions for the museum with Hiram, I soon found out that his taste in art was not much better than his grandmother’s taste in decorating. His most serious interest in the art he acquired was in having his picture taken next to the pieces. His wife’s attitude was exactly the same.
    When I first came to work at the Piedmont it had been a traditional museum—visitors walked by enclosed glass cases and roped-off exhibits. In other words, it was very boring. Pieces were rarely displayed as anything but individual works.
    My own feeling was that works of art could be best appreciated if they were presented with a story.
    When I first proposed the concept to Eric, he instantly disliked it.
    “This is a museum,” he said. “Each and every piece has its own unique history, sometimes a thousand years apart from the piece next to it. We can’t tell a story by combining a Babylonian chariot wheel, a Persian helmet a millennium younger, and a Roman spear from hundreds of years after that.”
    I disagreed. “Every one of those civilizations battled each other. You could have an exciting story about war and conquest.”
    Hiram had been intrigued with the idea.
    Considering all the Mesopotamian art that we had, it was easy for me to come up with a theme.
    “Babylon,” I told them, “and specifically, Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon. He was the greatest king in the world during his time, and Babylon was the most fabulous city. Everybody has heard of the Tower of Babel and the Babylonian Captivity of the Jews. Both are themes taught in Sunday school. And of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.”
    I was right, of course. With so much colorful history and architecture, a Babylonian theme was perfect for the museum.
    “We can make a visit to the museum an experience,” I told Hiram and Eric. “People wouldn’t walk by lifeless objects on stands and in display cases but pieces that combine with scenery to tell them a story. Periodically we can change the theme, reusing some of the pieces and adding those we have in storage.”
    “What sort of themes?” Hiram asked.
    “Universal ones—love, war, and money, the three building blocks of civilization. The public is more interested in how Cleopatra seduced Caesar and Mark Antony and ended up taking the bite of a snake than they are in how many countries the Romans conquered.”
    I called it “world building,” taking a concept from science fiction writers who create futuristic and alien worlds from scratch with their imaginations.
    The world I set out to build was Babylon when it was the Queen of the World… well, that was what I told Hiram and Eric, but knowing that sex was more important than culture, what I really set out to re-create was the Whore of Babylon.
    As the entrance to the exhibit gallery, I chose the Ishtar Gate, the most famous entry of the city.
    “Ishtar was the Babylonian Venus, the Goddess of Love,” I pointed out, showing them pictures of the