The United States on Thursday (September 23) returned to Iraq the
“Gilgamesh Tablet
,
”
a 3,500-year-old Mesopotamian gem that had been stolen and smuggled onto American soil.
This restitution
"restores the self-esteem and confidence of Iraqi society,"
Iraqi Culture Minister Hasan Nazim said at a ceremony in Washington.
Read alsoRestitutions: Benin demands time
Despite its small size, the tablet is indeed of immense value. It contains fragments of the “Epic of Gilgamesh”, considered one of the oldest literary works of humanity and which recounts the adventures of a powerful king of Mesopotamia in search of immortality.
"This story influenced the great monotheistic religions, left traces on the Iliad and the Odyssey"
, noted the Director General of Unesco Audrey Azoulay.
"The epic of Gilgamesh tells us about what we have in common"
and its restitution represents
"a great victory against those who mutilate the heritage"
, she added.
"His repatriation is, in itself, an epic tale"
, for his part underlined Kenneth Polite, a senior official of the US Department of Justice.
This clay tablet with cuneiform characters was said to have been stolen from an Iraqi museum in 1991, when the country was plunged into the first Gulf War. She reappeared in the UK in 2001, according to Kenneth Polite. An American art dealer bought it in 2003 from a Jordanian family established 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 Hobby Lobby decoration chain, the Green family, known for their Christian activism, who wanted to display it in their Museum of the Bible in Washington.
Read also Works looted by Daesh flood the international market
In 2017, a museum curator was concerned about the provenance of the tablet, judging the documents provided during the purchase incomplete, which had led to its seizure in 2019. The Iraqi Minister of Culture invited
“all universities , museums, institutes and antique collectors ”
to show the same vigilance and
“ show more interest in the return of stolen cultural property to their country of origin ”
.
Last July, 17,000 coins some 4,000 years old had already been returned to Iraq by the United States.
The majority of them date from the Sumerian period, one of the oldest civilizations in Mesopotamia.
Iraq has seen its antiquities looted for decades, over the course of the country's conflicts, including the US invasion of 2003.