US returns 3,800 smuggled Mesopotamian artifacts to Iraq

ERBIL, (Kurdistan 24) – US officials handed over nearly 4,000 Mesopotamian artifacts smuggled from Iraq and bought illegally by an American arts-and-crafts company to the Iraqi Ambassador in Washington on Wednesday.

The roughly 3,800 items include Sumerian cuneiform tablets, many of them from the ancient cities of Ur and Irisagrig, located in what is now modern-day Iraq. Some are thought to date back as far as 2,100 BC.

Officials from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) displayed some of the antiquities for the press during a ceremony, held at the Washington residence of Iraq's Ambassador to the United States, Fareed Yasseen.

“We will continue to work together to prevent the looting of antiquities and ensure that those who would attempt to profit from this crime are held accountable,” ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan told the media.

The company, an arts-and-crafts retail chain called Hobby Lobby, agreed in July to surrender the items and pay a $3 million fine.

US Justice Department officials claimed in court proceedings that Hobby Lobby bought the items for $1.6 million through dealers in the United Arab Emirates and Israel, ignoring multiple indications that the items had been looted from archaeological sites in Iraq.

In a statement made just after the civil action had been brought against the company last summer, Hobby Lobby President Steve Green said, “The company was new to the world of acquiring these items, and did not fully appreciate the complexities of the acquisitions process. This resulted in some regrettable mistakes.”

Green also founded Washington's controversial Museum of the Bible in 2016, which critics say favors a view of biblical history catered to a particular form of American evangelical Christianity rather than that accepted by most biblical scholars.

Hobby Lobby previously announced that the antiquities were not purchased to be displayed in the museum, but did not specify what it had intended to do with them.