US Attorney’s office discover false record of purchase

The Museum of the Bible will be returning another artifact to Iraq. This was after the US Attorney’s office discovered that an auction house concealed its first purchase history.

The artifact, a Gilgamesh tablet is causing yet another dispute for the Bible museum.

A Federal Government prosecutor has since filed a petition that the 6 by 5 inch tablet made of clay and which was pilfered from Iraq.

False Papers

In Eastern New York, the US attorney’s office stated that Hobby Lobby legitimately bought the Gigamesh dream tablet. In addition, they purchased the dream tablet for a whooping 1.6 million Dollars as a loan to the museum.

However the papers recording the artifact’s evidence of purchase were false.

The US attorney Richard Donogue stated this fact and filed a confiscation claim on the Gilgamesh tablet on Monday 1st of June 2020.

He said: “In this case, a major auction house failed to meet its obligations by minimizing its concerns that the provenance of an important Iraqi artifact was fabricated and withheld from the buyer information that undermined the provenance’s reliability.”

In a formal statement, the Museum of the Bible declared that it has collaborated with the investigation and is in agreement with authorities to return the tablet to Iraq.

The Bible Museum stated that hobby lobby will file a suit against the British auction house that traded it.

Museum of the Bible has identified the auction house  as Christie’s

History of the artifact

Image: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement

The clay tablet is a portion of the Gilgamesh epic which narrates the story of an influential king who wages wars with gods. In addition the powerful King tries to uncover the secret to eternal life.

It is regarded as one of the world’s earliest great works of literature dating to Sumerian civilization of Mesopotamia. This was more than 4000 years ago.

The epic is popularly known for comprising of a flood tale pretty much the same as Noah’s flood story in the Bible.

The history of the tablet dates back to 1600BC.  It consists of a narrative of a dream, translated by the mother of the hero.

There has been restrains on importation of cultural items from war-torn Iraq. This has been from the period when looting have taken place in nine museums in 1991 during the Gulf War.

Hobby lobby bought the tablet in 2014 from an auction house and donated it to the Museum of the Bible.

In 2017 museum officials began an investigation on the place of origin of the tablet. The US attorney referred to this fact-finding mission as “due diligence research”

Furthermore, as reported by the US Attorney’s office, the official of the museum brought questions about the artifacts to the auction house. Although, the officials of the auction house gave a report of the antiquity’s dealer account showing where it was bought. Nevertheless, they held back the falsified provenance letter and the dealer’s name.

The museum informed the Iraqi embassy that it had the Gilgamesh tablet. Moreover, it had committed itself to careful study of the provenance of the artifact independently.

The Goal of Hobby Lobby

Steve Green, president of the Hobby Lobby and founder of the Museum of the Bible in an official statement in March said: “I trusted the wrong people to guide me and unwittingly dealt with unscrupulous dealers in those early years.

My goal was always to protect, preserve, study and share cultural property with the world… If I learn of other items in the collection for which another person or entity has a better claim I will continue to do the right thing with these items.”