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A 3,500-year-old “Gilgamesh Tablet,” a clay artifact returned to Iraq on Tuesday after being returned by the United States. The authorities hailed a “victory” over those who steal the country’s “history”.
Returned by the United States, a “Tablet of Gilgamesh”, a Mesopotamian jewel of 3,500 years, is back in Iraq, where it was exhibited on Tuesday (December 7th).
The clay tablet with cuneiform characters is said to have been stolen from an archeological site or museum in Iraq in 1991, during the Gulf War that broke out after the invasion of Kuwait. It features excerpts from “The Epic of Gilgamesh”, considered one of the oldest literary works of mankind and narrating the adventures of a powerful king of Mesopotamia in search of immortality.
During a press conference on Tuesday in Baghdad, the foreign minister presented the culture minister with three artifacts returned by the United States and the United Kingdom: the tablet of Gilgamesh, a ram’s head and a Sumerian tablet .
The Gilgamesh tablet “is of great importance, it is one of the oldest literary texts in the history of Iraq,” Culture and Antiquities Minister Hassan Nazem told AFP. At a press conference, he underlined the “message sent to all those who smuggle our antiques and sold them at international auctions: in fine, the fate of these operations is restitution.”
In one year, Iraq recovered nearly 18,000 artefacts, including 17,899 pieces some 4,000 years old returned by the United States this summer.
“Victoire”
“This day represents a victory in the face of the desperate attempts of those who try to steal our great history and our ancient civilization”, welcomed the Iraqi foreign minister, Fouad Hussein, on Tuesday.
The Gilgamesh tablet reappeared in the UK in 2001. An American art dealer bought it in 2003 from a Jordanian family living in London. He then shipped it to the United States without specifying the nature of the package to customs and sold it to antique dealers in 2007 for $ 50,000, with a false certificate of origin.
It was finally sold in 2014 for $ 1.67 million to the owners of the Museum of the Bible in Washington. In 2017, a museum curator worried about the provenance of the tablet, deeming the documents provided during the purchase incomplete, which led to its seizure in 2019.
With AFP
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