SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region – Iraq’s embassy in the United States on Saturday received five ancient artifacts valued at a total of over $680,000 that were stolen in the past thirty years from the country.
The artifacts were received by the Iraqi ambassador in the US in a ceremony attended by the district attorney of Manhattan, and the deputy special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations, read a statement from the Iraqi foreign ministry.
“I am grateful to the Manhattan District Attorney and his staff for their continuous and successful efforts to combat antiquities smuggling, as they were able, through their efforts, to return these precious artifacts, of historical importance to Iraq,” Ambassador Farid Yassin said, adding that the artifacts are part of the Iraqi heritage and therefore belong to Iraq.
“They will be displayed in public museums in front of the Iraqi people to increase their appreciation for their history and culture,” Yassin added.
The artifacts restored include an ivory plaque dating from 701 to 800 BC “depicting a winged human-headed Sphinx that was used to decorate royal furniture,” and a “bowl with a scalloped flower, valued at $200,000, looted from Nimrud, a city in northern Iraq that dates back to the Neo-Assyrian period (911-612 B.C.).”
This comes a day after the Iraqi Consulate General in Los Angeles received two artifacts, one of which dated back to around 4000 years ago.
Iraq in December returned a 3,500-year-old clay tablet featuring a portion of the epic of Gilgamesh, three decades after it was stolen an Iraqi museum and imported illegally into the US.
Iraqi antiquities have been subjected to frequent looting and vandalism since 2003, the most severe of which was in 2014 when the Islamic State (ISIS) occupied large swathes of the country.
Around 17,000 antique artifacts have been returned to Iraq from the US since July, most of which date back to the Sumerian period around 4,000 years ago, one of the oldest civilizations in Mesopotamia.
Nevertheless, issues remain in the pursuit of historical Iraqi artifacts. There has been a considerable increase in illicit excavations in recent years, according to a survey by the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL).
