US RETURNS LOOTED 3,500-YEAR-OLD GILGAMESH TABLET TO IRAQ

Wed 08 December 2021:

A little clay tablet dating back 3,500 years and featuring a section of the Epic of Gilgamesh has been formally returned to Iraq after being plundered from an Iraqi museum 30 years ago and recently retrieved from the United States.

The Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, worth $1.7 million, is one of the world’s oldest surviving pieces of literature and one of the world’s oldest religious texts. It was discovered in the wreckage of Assyrian King Assur Banipal’s library in 1853 as part of a 12-tablet collection.

During the 1991 Gulf War, the tablet was stolen from an Iraqi museum. Officials suspect it was illegally smuggled into the United States in 2003, then sold to Hobby Lobby’s owners and displayed in the company’s Museum of the Bible in Washington.

In September 2019, federal authorities from Homeland Security Investigations took the tablet from the museum. The confiscation of the tablet was approved by a federal judge in New York in July of this year.

The Iraqi foreign minister presented three antiquities seized from the US and the UK to the culture minister during a news conference in Baghdad on Tuesday: the Gilgamesh tablet, a Sumerian ram’s head, and a Sumerian tablet.

Minister of Culture and Antiquities Hassan Nazim told media that the Tablet of Gilgamesh “is of great importance, it is one of the oldest literary texts in Iraq’s history.”

The process of rescuing the priceless artefact has been described by UNESCO as the culmination of decades of cooperation between the United States and Iraq, both of whom are signatories to the 1970 UNESCO Convention.

‘Victory’

Iraq has recovered nearly 18,000 artefacts in a year, including 17,899 pieces repatriated from the United States in the middle of the year.

The artefacts were returned in late July on a plane bringing Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi back from a visit to Washington, where he met with US President Joe Biden.

US TO RETURN 17,000 ANCIENT ARTIFACTS LOOTED AND SMUGGLED OUT OF IRAQ AFTER INVASION

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein stated on Tuesday that “This day represents a victory in the face of the desperate attempts of those why try to steal our great history and our ancient civilisation.”

In 2001, the tablet was reintroduced in the United Kingdom. In 2003, an American art dealer purchased it from a Jordanian family in London, then shipped it to the United States without disclosing its true nature to customs.

In 2014, the tablet was sold for $1.67 million to Hobby Lobby’s owners, the Green family, devout Christians who wished to display it at their Bible Museum in Washington.

In 2017, a museum curator became concerned about the tablet’s origin, believing that the documentation was lacking. In 2019, it was ultimately seized.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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