Iraq receives more smuggled artifacts from Lebanon

Iraq's Ministry of Culture announced on Wednesday that the process of returning artifacts from Lebanon was carried out through 3 official bodies while indicating that a new batch of artifacts will be returned to Iraq.

The head of the Antiquities Board  in the Ministry of Culture, Laith Majid Hussein, said in a press statement, that "Iraq did not pay the shipping fees to the company for bringing the artifacts smuggled to Lebanon, but rather the latter who carried out the shipping process and returned them to the country."

He added that the returning process of the antiquities was carried out by a delegation from the government headed by the Iraqi Intelligence Service, the Ministry of Justice, and the Lebanese Culture, noting that "the coming days will witness the return of some of artifacts from the United States and several other countries."

He pointed out that "the board is following up on all antiquities in all countries, and we are determined to return the last piece to Iraq from abroad."

Lebanon’s Ministry of Culture handed over to Iraq on Sunday 337 ancient artifacts that had been on display in a Lebanese museum for years.

The items, which included clay tablets, were returned by Minister of Culture Mohammed Murtada to Iraq’s ambassador to Lebanon during a ceremony held at the National Museum of Beirut.

Murtada told Iraq’s state-run news agency in a Saturday report that a Lebanese committee had been investigating the items since 2018.

The artifacts had been stored most recently at the private Nabu Museum in northern Lebanon. The report gave no further details about the artifacts’ provenance.

“We are celebrating the handing over of 337 artifacts that are of different eras of civilizations in Mesopotamia,” Iraq’s ambassador to Lebanon Haider Shyaa Al-Barrak said at the ceremony. This will not be the last handover, he added, without elaborating.

Many of Iraq’s antiquities were looted during the country’s decades of war and instability, mostly since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Iraq’s government has been slowly recovering the plundered antiquities since then. Archaeological sites across the country however continue to be neglected due to lack of funds.

At least half dozen shipments of antiquities and documents have been returned to Iraq’s museum since 2016, according to Iraqi authorities.



PUKmedia