After a year-long investigation, the FBI returns “a small piece of history” to Iraq that was stolen two decades ago.
It has been called one of the worst acts of cultural hooliganism in modern times.
The time was 20 years ago and the place was Baghdad during the US-led invasion of Iraq.
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As US forces advanced towards the country’s capital city, looters descended on the National Museum of Iraq and looted approximately 15,000 items.
The looting sparked worldwide outrage, with French President Jacques Chirac declaring the incident “a crime against humanity.”
Over the years, some museum artifacts have been located and returned.
And now, one more item stolen from the museum two decades ago is on its way home, the FBI said on March 9.
The item, called “Furniture Fitting with Sphinx Trampling on a Youth,” dates to some 2,700 years. The ivory figure stands 2 1/4 inches tall and 1 1/2 inches wide and is embellished with pigment and gold leaf.
The artifact had been on display at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta until special agents at the FBI field offices in Boston and Atlanta determined it was the property of Iraq.
Returning ‘a small part of history’
The piece is believed to be the first relic looted from the Iraq Museum to be in a United States museum collection.
Investigators believe the Carlos Museum purchased the artifact from a third party in 2006 after they were provided with a false provenance claiming the artifact entered the US in 1969.
The agents consulted experts, the FBI said, including one with photos showing the item at the Iraq Museum in 1983, and representatives from the Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania, who helped confirm the artifact’s authenticity.
After the year-long investigation, which included agents in Boston, Atlanta and the FBI’s Art Crimes Team Unit, the museum turned the artifact over to the FBI last December.
“We are pleased that our agents are able to return a small piece of history to where it belongs in Iraq,” Keri Farley, special agent in charge of FBI Atlanta, said in a statement.
In a March 8 ceremony at the Iraqi Embassy in Washington DC, a special agent from the Art Crimes Team turned the artifact over to the embassy for repatriation.
The FBI’s Art Crimes Team was established in 2004, partly as a result of looting in Baghdad.
The team includes field office agents from around the country who are trained in all aspects of art, including art history and the business of art.
Tracking down Iraqi artifacts
Thousands of artifacts stolen from the museum and other locations in Iraq are believed to have found their way onto the international art market after being removed from temples, archaeological sites and museums over the past two decades, CNN reported.
ISIS, which controlled much of Iraq between 2014 and 2017, was also responsible for destroying and smuggling antiquities to help finance its operations.
In December, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced the return of Iraqi antiquities that had been looted from the Iraq Museum in 2003.
The returned pieces included four cylinder seals and three seals dating to between the Mesopotamian (2700-2500 BCE) and Neo-Babylonian (612-539 BCE) periods.
In 2021, Iraq recovered 17,000 archaeological artifacts, according to the New York Times.
About 12,000 of the items were held by the Museum of the Bible, which was founded by the family that owned the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores.
The other 5,000 pieces were held by Cornell University.
In 2017, Hobby Lobby agreed to seize thousands of artifacts from Iraq and pay a $3 million fine to settle a civil action by the Department of Justice.
Three years later, Steve Green, chairman of the board of the Museum of the Bible and president of Hobby Lobby, announced that the museum would return 11,500 artifacts to Egypt and Iraq.
