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A 3,500-year-old clay tablet was stolen from a museum in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War.
A 3,500-year-old clay tablet containing the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was stolen from a museum in Iraq 30 years ago and recently discovered in the United States, has been returned to Iraq.
$ 1.7m cuneiform tablet, known as Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, one of the oldest books in the world, and one of the oldest religious books. It was discovered in 1853 as part of a collection of 12 tablets in the ruins of the Assyrian King Assur Banipal’s library.
The tablet was stolen from an Iraqi museum during the Gulf War of 1991. Officials believe it was smuggled into the United States in 2003, then sold to Hobby Lobby owners and eventually exhibited in the Museum of the Bible in Washington.
Federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations confiscated the tablet from a museum in September 2019. A New York state judge approved the release of the tablet in July this year.
At a press conference on Tuesday in Baghdad, the Iraqi foreign minister presented to the Minister of Culture three items found in the US and the United Kingdom: the Gilgamesh pill, the Sumerian ram’s head, and the Sumerian pill.
The Gilgamesh tablet “is an important document, one of the oldest in Iraq’s history,” Hassan Nazim, Minister of Culture and Antiquities, told AFP.
At a press conference, he emphasized “the message that has been sent to all who smuggle antiquities and sell them in international markets: in the end, the future of the profession is revenge.”
UNESCO has defined the acquisition of heritage resources as the culmination of a decades-long treaty between the US and Iraq, both of which signed the 1970 UNESCO Convention.
‘Ancient civilization’
In one year, Iraq has uncovered some 18,000 artifacts, including 17,899 pieces. returned from the US in the middle of the year.
The footage was retrieved late July on a plane carrying Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi from a flight to Washington where he met with US President Joe Biden.
“This day represents a victory in the face of the efforts of people who are trying to steal our great history and our ancient civilization,” Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said on Tuesday.
The tablet re-appeared in the UK in 2001. An American art dealer bought it from a Jordanian family in London in 2003, before shipping the piece to the US without announcing its true nature.
It was then sold to antique dealers in 2007 for $ 50,000 under a fake certificate of origin.
The tablet was also sold in 2014 for $ 1.67m to Hobby Lobby owners, the Green family, caring Christians who wanted to exhibit at their Museum of the Bible in Washington.
The museum manager was impressed with how the pill started in 2017, noting that his notes were not enough. It was finally captured in 2019.
Iraq has seen artifacts that have been stolen over the years, including since the US uprising in 2003 and the rise of the ISIL (ISIS) group 10 years later.
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