UK returning 4,000-year-old artifact to Iraq discovered in online auction
The Sumerian relic is thought to be among thousands of artifacts stolen from Iraq in the last century.
The United Kingdom will repatriate an ancient Sumerian relic after experts determined it had been stolen from Iraq, the British Museum said on Monday.
The London-based institution discovered the 4,000-year-old limestone sculpture being sold in May 2019 by an online auctioneer, who had listed it as a “western Asiatic Akkadian tablet” from a private collection. The museum experts informed Metropolitan police that the item was actually an ancient plaque looted from a Sumerian temple dating back to around 2400 B.C.
“We’re used to coming across tablets, pots, metalwork, seals and figurines on the art market or in seizures that have been trafficked. But it’s really exceptional to see something of this quality,” St John Simpson, the museum’s senior curator, told The Guardian.
The British Museum didn’t say when the relic was stolen, only that it originated from a temple looted in the 1990s during the Gulf War and again in 2003 during the US-led war.
