Brooklyn federal prosecutors say an ancient artifact, which contains the world’s oldest pieces of literature, obtained by arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby should be returned to Iraq.
Brooklyn US Attorney Richard Donoghue’s office filed civil action on Monday stating the item known as the “Gilgamesh Dream Tablet” must be returned to the Iraqi government, the New York Post reports.
The piece was looted before it was sold to Hobby Lobby for $1.674 million during an auction in 2014. The artifact dates back to 1600 B.C. and has a Sumerian epic poem written in cuneiform on the clay tablet, according to the newspaper.
“Whenever looted cultural property is found in this country, the United States government will do all it can to preserve heritage by returning such artifacts where they belong,” Donoghue wrote in a statement. “In this case, a major auction house failed to meet its obligations by minimizing its concerns that the provenance of an important Iraqi artifact was fabricated, and withheld from the buyer information that undermined the provenance’s reliability.”
The 5-by-6-inch item was seized by federal agents from the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.
The tablet has had a lengthy history of owners, according to prosecutors. One dealer allegedly falsely claimed the tablet had been legally obtained at an auction in 1981 before laws were passed restricting the importation of Iraqi artifacts.
Hobby Lobby purchased it from an unnamed international auction house in 2014 and put it on display at the Museum of the Bible.
Issues surrounding the tablet popped up three years after Hobby Lobby purchased it. A museum curator contacted the auction company to ask some questions about its origins.
Despite requests from the museum and Hobby Lobby, the auction house failed to disclose details about how they had obtained the artifact. It also failed to provide the false provenance letter, which it knew would not hold up to “scrutiny in a public auction,” prosecutors wrote in court papers.
Museum spokeswoman Charlotte Clay said the museum supports returning the item to Iraq.
“The museum, before displaying the item, informed the Embassy of Iraq on Nov. 13, 2017, that it had the item in its possession but extensive research would be required to establish provenance,” she said in a statement.
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