The Gilgamesh Tablet “is of great importance, it is one of the oldest literary texts in history“he said to the AFP the Minister of Culture and Antiquities Hassan Nazem.
The “Epic of Gilgamesh” narrates the adventures of that mighty Mesopotamian king on his quest for immortality.
The cuneiform tablet is said to have been stolen from an Iraqi museum or archaeological site in 1991, during the Gulf War that broke out after the invasion of Kuwait.
Nazem, highlighted the “message sent to all those who smuggle our antiques and sell them at international auctions”, stating that “the destination of these operations is restitution”.
In one year, Iraq recovered about 18,000 pieces, of which 17,899 are about 4,000 years old.
“This day represents a victory against the desperate attempts of those who seek to steal our great history and our ancient civilization,” Iraqi diplomatic chief Fouad Hussein congratulated himself on Tuesday.
The Gilgamesh tablet reappeared in the UK in 2001. An American art dealer bought it in 2003 from a Jordanian family based in London. Later, he sent it to the United States without specifying the nature of the package at customs and sold it to an antique dealer in 2007 for $ 50,000, with a false certificate of origin.
It was finally sold in 2014 for $ 1.67 million to the owners of the Museum of the Bible in Washington.
In 2017, a museum curator became interested in the provenance of the tablet, judging the documents supplied at the time of purchase incomplete, leading to its seizure in 2019.
Iraq has suffered from looting of its antiquities for decades, especially after the 2003 US invasion and the arrival of jihadists from the Islamic State (IS) group ten years later.