A 3,500-year-old tablet featuring the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh has been returned to Iraq three decades after it was stolen and illegally imported to the US.
The tablet was exhibited to the media in Iraq on Tuesday by the authorities who welcomed its return as a “victory” over those who stole the country’s “history”.
The clay tablet features characters in cuneiform and is believed to have been stolen from an Iraqi museum in 1991 while the country was caught up in the first Gulf War.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is considered one of the oldest pieces of literature in the world, telling the story of a Mesopotamian king on a quest for immortality.
In a press conference on Tuesday in Baghdad, the Iraqi foreign minister delivered to the culture minister three artefacts recovered from the US and the UK: the tablet of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian ram’s head and a Sumerian tablet.
The tablet of Gilgamesh “is of great importance, it is one of the oldest literary texts of Iraq’s history,” Minister of Culture and Antiquities Hassan Nazim said.
During the press conference, he stressed the “message sent to all those who smuggle our antiquities and have sold them at international auctions: ultimately, the fate of such operations is restitution”.
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