Sumerian tablet looted from Iraq to be formally returned by US

A 3,600-year-old tablet showing part of the Epic of Gilgamesh will be handed back to Iraq by the US.

Known as the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, it shows parts of a Sumerian poem from the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest known religious texts. It is believed to have been looted from a museum in Iraq in 1991, and “fraudulently” entered the US in 2007, according to Unesco. It was acquired by the Christian arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby for display in its museum of biblical artefacts in 2014, and seized by the US Department of Justice in 2019.

The handover ceremony will take place at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC tomorrow.

“This restitution is a major victory over those who mutilate heritage and then traffic it to finance violence and terrorism,” said the Unesco directorgeneral, Audrey Azoulay.

In 2017 Hobby Lobby agreed to pay a fine of $3m (£2.1m) and forfeit thousands of smuggled Iraqi artefacts. Its president, Steve Green, said the company “should have exercised more oversight and questioned how the acquisitions were handled”.