The United States give it Iraq Thousands of artifacts have been looted in the past decades. Culture Minister Hassan Nasseem said in Baghdad on Wednesday that Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi will take about 17,000 antiquities from the Mesopotamian era on his flight back from Washington on Thursday. It is the largest restoration of antiquities in Iraq so far. This was preceded by months of efforts by the Iraqi authorities and the Iraqi embassy in Washington.
Ancient sites in Iraq have been in power since the coup Saddam Hussein After the US-led invasion in 2003, it was extensively looted and destroyed, often by organized gangs – but also by residents who saved their lives by selling stolen property. About 15,000 artifacts were stolen from the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad alone. Then many of the artifacts ended up with traders in Europe or the United States of America.
According to the US Department of Justice, among the artifacts expected to return to Iraq is a 3,500-year-old clay tablet with an excerpt from the Gilgamesh Epic, which is on temporary display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington. The painting was confiscated in 2019 along with thousands of other Iraqi cultural treasures in the museum and from the museum’s founder.
