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Headline: One of Oldest Literary Works In History To Be Handed Back To Iraq By The United States

Caption: One of the oldest literary works in history is to be formally handed back to Iraq by the United States. According to UNESCO, the “Gilgamesh Tablet”, also known as the “Gilgamesh Dream Tablet”, is believed to have been looted from a museum in Iraq following the conflict in that country in 1991. In 2007 it was fraudulently introduced into the US art market and in 2019, it was seized by the US Department of Justice. UNESCO say they will “celebrate a significant victory in the fight against the illicit trafficking of cultural objects” when one of the work is handed back at a ceremony at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC on Thursday, September 23rd. “In addition to this exceptional piece, in July, the US Government facilitated the voluntary repatriation of 17,000 artefacts to Iraq which were discovered to have been looted in recent decades,” say UNESCO.

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