Some catty comment. Other opinions Invited.

A mention of The Guennol Lioness came up in reader responses to The Telegraph's 'World's Fifty Best Works of Art'.

The little artefact from ancient Mesopotamia recently sold at Sotheby's New York for (are you sitting down?) $57.16 million US (including the auction house premium).

The five-thousand-years-old limestone sculpture is small enough to fit into one hand, and depicts a lioness's head on a muscular woman's body, with its tail curved around a slim waist.

The sale was to an anonymous bidder and shattered records for the sale of any sculpture or antiquity at auction.

The price surpassed the $29.1 million US that Pablo Picasso's bronze sculpture Tête de Femme (Dora Maar) fetched in November, (you decide if it was worth it) as well as the $28.6 million US paid for the 2,000-year-old Roman bronze Artemis and the Stag in June. Both were also sold by Sotheby's.

By my reckoning, this clunky Mesopotamian whatnot cost nearly £10 million an inch. And despite Sotheby's claim that, "The new owner has the distinction of possessing one of the oldest, rarest and most beautiful works of art from the ancient world", it's really not very good.

YOU COULD PROBABLY BUY MOST OF MESOPOTAMIA FOR THAT MONEY

I also suggest that this high-falutin' sale shows a contemptuous disrespect for the true value of money - currency being a measure of human labour and worth. Fifty-seven million bucks for some kind of Cub Scout toggle is insulting to people who work for a living.

One could almost understand such a ridiculous transaction if it were for Michelangelo's Pieta or some similar example of creative brilliance - but unless my ancient eyes are deceiving me, that's not what we have here. It's essentially a piece of personal decoration. And ugly at that.

When new, the lioness is said to have been painted. It has four holes drilled in its back which were for a thong to hang it around the owner's neck, and its missing lower hind legs are thought to have been made of gold or silver.

NOT MUCH GOOD FOR ANYTHING, REALLY ... AND NOT MUCH TO LOOK AT (A BIT LIKE HIMSELF)

But the fact is, it doesn't have any gold and silver any more. It's broken. It's useless as a pendant, it wouldn't make a very good stir stick, and as a work of art, it could be eclipsed right now by the work of any of a dozen Inuit sculptors whose traditions go back just as far as Mesopotamia's and whose art is genuinely alive, well-formed and pleasing to the beholder.