UNESCO celebrates a clear victory against antiquities trafficking.. the return of the Gilgamesh Tablet to Iraq after 3 decades of smuggling

Today, Thursday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) celebrates a “clear victory in the battle against the illicit trade in cultural property” with the return of the “Gilgamesh Tablet” to its original homeland, Iraq. The oldest literary and religious texts in the world.

The artifact was looted from an Iraqi museum in the wake of the unrest in the country in the early nineties of the last century, and was offered for sale in 2007 by fraudulent methods before being seized by the US Department of Justice in 2019, according to UNESCO.

The tablet was so dusty that it could not be read at first;

But upon cleaning it up, experts realized that it describes part of the famous epic of Gilgamesh, which chronicles the adventures of a powerful Mesopotamian king in his quest for immortality.

An American art dealer bought this artifact in 2003 from a family residing in London, and it was shipped to the United States, without declaring the nature of this shipment to US customs.

After the tablet arrived in the United States, the dealer sold it in 2007 to other dealers for $50,000 using a forged certificate of origin.

In 2014, this tablet - at a price of $ 1.67 million - was purchased by the Green family, which owns the "Hobby Lobby" store chain, with the intention of displaying it at the Museum of the Bible in Washington.

But in 2017, a museum curator expressed concern about the tablet's provenance, after finding that the documents submitted during its purchase were incomplete.

In September 2019, the police confiscated this artifact, until last July a federal judge approved its confiscation.

A statement by the Ministry of Justice quoted the attorney general - Jacqueline Casoulis - responsible for this case, as saying that the decision issued two months ago "represents an important step towards the return of this world's literary masterpiece to its origin."

In July 2017, the American judiciary ordered Hobby Lobby to return to Iraq thousands of artifacts dating back to the Mesopotamian era, which were illegally exported to the United States, among archaeological treasures that include - especially - cuneiform tablets. Others and old seals.

Epic of Gilgamesh

Critics and researchers in the field of mythology considered the epic to be a popular text, given that it was circulated on occasions and holidays during which rituals were held, where the events and texts of its chapters appear on the bench, streets and squares.

Thus, it gained its popularity by approaching the concerns of the parishes in “Uruk” or “Al-Wurka” (the city in which Gilgamesh lived and wrote his famous epic in it) or other cities to which the text moved. And it became part of the book and documents treasury at the time, along with other evidence, according to a previous report by Al Jazeera Net.

This epic - which is considered one of the oldest literary works of mankind - still represents a fertile resource for writers, researchers and writers alike, being one of the most immortal epics of the literature of the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia, dating back to the era of the third "Ur" dynasty, and is the second oldest remaining religious texts From that period, after the religious texts of Al-Ahram.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the most immortal epics of ancient Mesopotamian etiquette (communication sites)

The epic of "Gilgamesh" begins with 5 Sumerian poems about Belgamesh (which is the Sumerian word for Gilgamesh), the king of Uruk, and sources confirm that it became a reference to an epic poem compiled in the Akkadian language.

The oldest surviving copy of this collected epic bears the name (Old Babylonian) and dates back to the 18th century BC.

Only a few clay tablets remain from that poem.

A person named "Sin Leqi and Nini" was able to collect a copy of the epic dating back to between the 13th-10th centuries BC and bearing the name "He who saw the abyss", or in contemporary words "He who sees the unseen".

About two-thirds of this copy of the 12 clay tablets has been recovered.

Some of the better off copies were discovered in the ruins of the royal library of Ashurbanipal (Mosul) from the seventh century BC.

The blogger made the epic into sections, and wanted its dramatic action to appear in order to make it a popular text;

The first section was about Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and the last was about an unruly man created by the gods (according to what they claim) to put an end to Gilgamesh's tyranny over the people of Warka.

The epic was written in Sumerian and translated into Akkadian before the discovery of the Arabic letters, and it tells in its far cry from global features that are not limited to a specific place, people or land, but transcend geographical borders with a vast global projection through what it tells about the city of "Uruk" and its people who are ruled by a king - Two-thirds of him is god and the other third is human - Gilgamesh, the son of the goddess Ninson, who bore him from the king of a legendary, sacred hero.

Iraq's lost treasures

In an article for the Washington Post, Nada Shabout, a professor of art history and coordinator of the Contemporary Arab and Islamic Cultural Studies Initiative at the University of North Texas, explained that this tablet is one of more than 17,000 artifacts and treasures that Iraq has begun recovering. from the United States.

Shabout commented that this is good news, as they have worked to document and pursue the lost Iraqi heritage.

However, this rare incident should not obscure the fact that Iraq was, and still is, subject to looting and theft with impunity.

She added that more than 18 years have passed since the invasion of Iraq, and the country is still in a state of chaos, and much of its cultural heritage is still missing, noting that this loss is exhausting, and that many Iraqi youth are far - because of this loss - from their history and collective memories. and their national identities, and they cannot access them, and I wondered: How do these young people shape their future?

Shabout went on to say that Iraq is "often called the cradle of civilization with its rich history, which dates back to the early days of humanity, because its soil is teeming with historical evidence in the form of archaeological sites, many of which have not been excavated, which exposed their safety to a constant threat, and damaged the invaders' machines. the military, and in the hands of thieves who act openly.”

She said that since 2003, ancient works stolen from Iraqi museums or archaeological sites have appeared and been circulated in different parts of the world.

Every now and then, there are news of stolen works confiscated, such as the 4,400-year-old stone statue of the Sumerian King Entemena of Lagash, which was recovered in 2006 and returned to Iraq in 2010.

However, the writer adds that most of the looted things were not found or could not be returned, and the Iraqis became deprived of their country's ancient heritage, and things from Iraq's glorious times also disappeared, but were mostly overlooked, and also disappeared.

Shabout explains that this loss has implications for the present of Iraq, which began in the 20th century when its modern state was established, expressing itself in part through his art, and that Iraqi artists succeeded in the fifties of the last century - especially what is known as the Pioneer Group and the Baghdad Group for Modern Art - in forming A "distinguished Iraqi icon", they helped envision a new national identity.