The Sumerian plaque, dating from around 2400 BC, belonged to the III dynastic period of southern Iraq
London, United Kingdom:
Britain will return a 4,000-year-old sculpture to Iraq after an investigation found it had been looted, the British Museum said on Monday.
Experts at the museum were called in by a specialist London police unit after an online shopping platform offered the artifact for sale in May last year with only limited details on its provenance.
Despite the online listing describing it as “an Akkadian tablet from West Asia,” experts have determined that the limestone wall plaque came from an ancient Sumerian temple dating from around 2,400 BC.
The temple had been excavated and looted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, looted again in the 1990s during the Gulf War and more recently in 2003 during the Iraq war, the museum said, without specifying when the plate was taken.
“This important piece has been illegally removed from Iraq and discovered by British authorities,” the British Museum said in a statement.
“Temple plaques like this are rare and there are only about 50 known examples.”
The London-based institution said the Iraqi government had “generously allowed her to be on display” at the museum prior to her repatriation.
“The British Museum is firmly committed to the fight against illicit trade and damage to cultural heritage,” said director Hartwig Fischer.
Jim Wingrave, Metropolitan Police, urged antique buyers to “conduct a due diligence process before every purchase”, especially when it comes to items from recent war zones like Iraq.
The British Museum said in July 2019 that it was working to assess and return various ancient objects looted from Iraq and Afghanistan that had been seized in Britain.
Among the items he planned to return to Iraq were 154 Mesopotamian texts written on clay in cuneiform script – one of the earliest writing systems – and seized upon entry in 2011.
However, the museum has come under fire for failing to return some disputed items to the countries of origin, including the Parthenon Marbles, also known as the Elgin Marbles, which Greece has long claimed.
He is also under pressure to return to Nigeria other precious objects looted during the time of the British Empire, in particular the statues decorated with the bronzes of Benin.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
