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Hobby Lobby’s ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ tablet returned to Iraq
The $1.6 million, 3,500-year-old clay tablet that bears the text of one of the world’s oldest works of literature and was purchased by Hobby Lobby in 2014 will finally be returned to Iraq on Thursday, the United Nations announced.
The tablet, which contains a portion of the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” will be formally returned to Iraq at a ceremony at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, the UN said.
The artifact, which came from the area of modern-day Iraq, was stolen from a museum in the country after the start of the Gulf War in August 1990, the UN said.
It was illegally shipped to the US in 2003, the US Department of Justice previously said, before arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby bought it an auction hosted by Christie’s in 2014.
In July, the US Department of Justice announced it seized the tablet because it entered the country despite the US’s 1990 ban on the import of looted Iraqi cultural and archaeological artifacts.
“By returning these illegally acquired objects, the authorities here in the United States and in Iraq are allowing the Iraqi people to reconnect with a page in their history,” said Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization….
https://nypost.com/2021/09/21/hobby-lobbys-epic-of-gilgamesh-tablet-returned-to-iraq/
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