US federal agents on Thursday returned two ancient stone artifacts to representatives of the Iraqi government at the country's consulate in Los Angeles.
Authorities said the artifacts, a fragment of a stone tablet inscribed with cuneiform characters and a hexagonal prism used to teach schoolchildren the cuneiform alphabet, are believed to be about 4,000 years old, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The German News Agency (DPA) said that the tablet fragment was purchased in an online auction, but US Customs and Border Protection flagged the item because it lacked the documentation needed for import.
Agents showed the artifact to an expert, who determined that it was originally from Iraq.
Items of cultural significance cannot be imported from Iraq without the Iraqi government’s consent, which it had not granted in this case, said Chad Fredrickson, a special agent from Homeland Security Investigations who handled the case.
The purchaser agreed to turn over the artifact to federal agents, who arranged for the tablet fragment to be returned to the Iraqi government.
The hexagonal prism was being held by a private gallery in Los Angeles, whose operators approached agents with “several items of interest,” Fredrickson said, “but the most interesting item they had was this cuneiform prism.”
Agents showed the artifact to an expert, who said it had likely been used to teach children the alphabet during the Old Babylonian period.
Fredrickson said the expert had only seen two other such prisms, one of which is kept by Yale University and another that has since gone missing.
While the exact provenance of the two artifacts was unclear, they “almost certainly” were looted from Iraq, Fredrickson said.
Iraq’s consul general in Los Angeles, Salwan Sinjaree, said the two artifacts would be returned to Iraq and transferred to the custody of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, which will place them in a museum.
