The Iraqi culture and foreign ministries have said this week that 17,000 ancient artefacts, looted from the country during the 2003 invasion, are making their way back home in a massive repatriation bid from the United States.
The items have, for the past two decades, been held by various museums and collections including the Museum of the Bible, a Washington organisation run by the wealthy evangelical owners of successful craft-store chain, Hobby Lobby.
Among the precious artefacts set to be repatriated is the Dream of Gilgamesh Tablet, a 3,500-year-old fragment of a clay tablet that records part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world’s first epic poem. The artefact was seized by the US Department of Justice in July on the grounds that it was sold to Hobby Lobby using a false provenance, and was illegally looted from Iraq.
Full article at: https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/a-3500-year-old-epic-text-begins-its-journey-home/