US to return ancient clay tablet to Iraq Thursday

WASHINGTON — It was looted from an Iraqi depository 30 years ago. Now, a 3,500-year-old clay tablet discovered successful the ruins of the room of an past Middle Eastern king is yet headed backmost to Iraq.

The relic is known arsenic the Gilgamesh Dream tablet. The tablet was written successful cuneiform, the past connection of Akkadian, and dates from astir 1500 B.C.

The substance includes a conception of the epic of Gilgamesh, a poem written astatine slightest 4,000 years ago.

Officials judge it was illegally looted from Iraq and imported into the United States successful 2003. According to NPR, the tablet traded hands betwixt antiquities dealers a fistful of times implicit the adjacent decennary until 2014.

That's erstwhile Christie's auction location sold the Gilgamesh Dream tablet to the trade store chain, Hobby Lobby.

Hobby Lobby is owned by the Green family, who besides owns the Museum of the Bible successful Washington, D.C. The household moved the tablet to the depository upon its purchase.

Federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations seized the tablet from the depository successful September 2019. In July, a federal justice approved the forfeiture of the tablet, clearing the mode for it to beryllium returned to Iraq.

The artifact volition beryllium repatriated aboriginal Thursday astatine a ceremonial astatine the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.

"By returning these illegally acquired objects, the authorities present successful the United States and successful Iraq are allowing the Iraqi radical to reconnect with a leafage successful their history," UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said successful a statement.