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Recently recovered antiquities are displayed at the foreign ministry in Baghdad, Iraq on Tuesday. Photo: AP

Thousands of ancient artefacts returned to Iraq’s Culture Ministry from the US

  • Most of the artefacts date back 4,000 years to ancient Mesopotamia and were recovered from the US in a recent trip by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi
  • Other pieces were also returned from Japan, Netherlands and Italy, Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein and Culture Minister Hassan Nadhim said
Iraq

More than 17,000 looted ancient items recovered from the United States and other countries have been handed over to Iraq’s Culture Ministry, a restitution described by the government as the largest in the country’s history.

Most of the artefacts date back 4,000 years to ancient Mesopotamia and were recovered from the US in a recent trip by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.

Other pieces were also returned from Japan, Netherlands and Italy, Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said in a joint press conference on Tuesday with Culture Minister Hassan Nadhim.

Nadhim said the recovery was “the largest in the history of Iraq” and the product of months of effort between the government and Iraq’s embassy in Washington.

“There’s still a lot of work ahead in this matter. There are still thousands of Iraqi artefacts smuggled outside the country,” he said.

“The United Nations resolutions are supporting us in the international community and the laws of other countries in which these artefacts are smuggled to are on our side,” he said. “The smugglers are being trapped day after day by these laws and forced to hand over these artefacts.”

The artefacts were handed over to the Culture Ministry in large wooden crates. A few were displayed but the ministry said the most significant pieces will be examined and later displayed to the public in Iraq’s National Museum.

“The US government seized some of the artefacts and sent them to the (Iraqi) embassy. The Gilgamesh tablet, the important one, will be returned to Iraq in the next month after legal procedures are finalised,” Hassan Nadhim said.

US authorities seized the Gilgamesh tablet in 2019 after it was smuggled, auctioned and sold to an arts dealer in Oklahoma and displayed at a museum in Washington, the Department of Justice said. A court ordered its forfeiture last month, it said.

It said that a US antiquities dealer had bought the tablet from a London-based dealer in 2003. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a 3,500-year-old Sumerian tale considered one of the world’s first pieces of literature.

Nadhim said other artefacts being returned included other tablets inscribed in cuneiform script.

Iraq’s antiquities have been looted throughout decades of war and instability since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Iraq’s government has been slowly recovering the plundered antiquities since. However, archaeological sites across the country continue to be neglected owing to lack of funds.

At least five shipments of antiquities and documents have been returned to Iraq’s museum since 2016, according to the Foreign Ministry.

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