Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/19/858605788/u-s-authorities-say-hobby-lobbys-gilgamesh-tablet-is-stolen-must-go-back-to-iraq

by rolph • 6 years ago

305 247 6 years ago

npr.org

vorpalhex• 6 years ago

Auction houses have some very shady practices sometimes, and I imagine it's very difficult for buyers to navigate what is legal and what's not - but also in this case, it kind of seems like maybe they should have known.

imglorp• 6 years ago

They knew. Their own expert lawyer warned them in 2010. It's also their MO apparently. A second case involves Egyptian papyri. They also mis-declare things to get them into the country (ie calling them "tiles" in customs declarations). So, lying and stealing.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/nyregion/hobby-lobby-arti...

2. https://www.thedailybeast.com/hobby-lobby-scandal-widens-as-...

3. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jan/09/a-scandal-in-ox...

_bxg1• 6 years ago

The comical part is that their very interest in the items is based in a religion that's nominally very opposed to lying and stealing. Fetishizing artifacts is apparently more important to their faith than doing what's right.

wl2• 6 years ago

It's not very complicated to know what's legal and what's not. Was it exported from the country of origin prior to 1970? Legal. Exported with the permission of the government at the time? Legal.

The problem here was fraudulent provenance documents. Ideally, every item that goes up for auction would have its provenance investigated. In practice, that's too expensive for the auction houses.

dabernathy89• 6 years ago

This is a related and surprisingly fascinating article about the cast of characters involved in many of the missteps of the Green Collection (which became the Museum of the Bible):

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/museum-...

hprotagonist• 6 years ago

take that, L. Bob Rife.

(the similarities between hobby lobby stealing tablets and religiously motivated tech magnates doing the same in a certain cyberpunk book of wide repute are, as usual, a bit eerie)

throwaway17_17• 6 years ago

Maybe the downvoted are for lack of on topic and substantive response, but I really appreciated the Snow Crash reference. I thought it was funny.

slg• 6 years ago

"Whenever looted cultural property is found in this country, the United States government will do all it can to preserve heritage by returning such artifacts where they belong"

So what is the definition of "looted" here? Museums are full of things that fit various definitions of that word.

renewiltord• 6 years ago

Essentially, if it happened in modern times we have to account to modern governments for it. It's just a property of current real life. If local people put pressure on their government over it, the government has to put pressure on America over it, and America may want to preserve relations by making a gesture that's ultimately strategically zero cost to preserve a strategic relationship.

No one with any power seriously wants the Kohinoor back so it's not going to go back. But having an artifact taken from your country during a war of invasion is going to create lots of pressure on you.

It's just realpolitik.

hyperpape• 6 years ago

It's the subject of some discussion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles).

I think an extremely conservative rule is that if it was taken after the original playstation was released, that's looting.

wl2• 6 years ago

There are a few clear lines you can draw.

Many institutions built their collections through a practice known as partage or division of finds. They would go to a government and offer their services as archeologists in exchange for a portion of their finds. While this practice is rare post-1970, there's not any serious debate about the legitimacy of cultural heritage exported under this regime.

Purchases from the antiquities markets are also considered legitimate, assuming the export was originally done with the permission of the originating country.

Where things really get questionable is when material culture was extracted by imperial power or as spoils of war. The Rosetta Stone is the most famous example. Also, you've got things like the Elgin Marbles that were taken through fraud and subterfuge a long time ago. These kinds of things are grandfathered in as a legal matter, but there's a moral argument for returning them anyway.

randyrand3• 6 years ago

Does this line of thought apply to land as well?

rolph• 6 years ago

i think looting relates to desired material or financial gain vs historical or cultural revelation niether of them would be immune to criticism but i think archeology has at least a foot to stand on

rtkwe• 6 years ago

It gets tougher knowing how much archaeology during the colonial period was essentially just looting.

triceratops7• 6 years ago

Hobby Lobby bought the tablet in a private sale, after a Hobby Lobby representative viewed the tablet in London. The auction house shipped the tablet to its New York office and, from there, hand-carried it to Hobby Lobby's headquarters in Oklahoma City, "so that Hobby Lobby could avoid incurring a New York sales tax," according to prosecutors.

Oy vey. I don't know how serious this is but it's not a great look. Is this kind of thing common in the art world?

I find old clay tablets, and ancient writings in general, absolutely fascinating - particularly the randomness of the information that we can get from them. The oldest person whose name we know is from a signature on a receipt for some oil or some other merchandise.[1] It's slightly incredible when you realize that you have no idea who the ruler at the time was, or what he (or she did) but you can pinpoint precisely which goods exchanged hands on a specific date.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kushim_(individual)

AdmiralAsshat• 6 years ago

Oy vey. I don't know how serious this is but it's not a great look. Is this kind of thing common in the art world?

Sure. The British museum used to be fairly brazen about the fact that they'd loot less-developed countries for cultural artifacts. Who do you think used to sponsor archaeology expeditions?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Museum#Controversies

triceratops7• 6 years ago

Err... my comment was referring to the sales tax evasion. I'm aware that the looting of cultural artifacts is an age-old practice, that's only recently been legislated against.

nelaboras• 6 years ago

Different times and rules. Britain robbed it's colonies and exploited their people. Doesn't mean the British museum would still do this today (but I'd also not exclude it). In contrast some countries like Germany have started actively bringing cultural heritage back to its home (often against the institutions currently holding them).

slfnflctd• 6 years ago

This to me is the most egregious part:

[...] authorities said it bought thousands of artifacts that had been smuggled out of Iraq. Some of the items on display at the Museum of the Bible had been looted from previously unknown archaeological sites.

Breathtakingly unethical.

taborj• 6 years ago

...assuming that they knew they were looted. You could make a case that, yes of course these items were looted, and they turned a blind eye to that. But you could also make a case that they trusted a 3rd party to validate the artifacts.

Don't forget this is the group that voluntarily funded research that eventually proved some of their most prized possessions were, in fact, forgeries[0], so we have to assume they have at least a modicum of ethics.

[0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/museum-of...

triceratops7• 6 years ago

Well...yes allegedly buying looted artifacts is bad, but that was already the headline. I didn't realize that allegations of sales tax evasion(? not sure if it was a charge, or just an interesting tidbit pointed out by prosecutors), a pretty pedestrian crime in comparison, would also accompany these charges. It's sort of like: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArsonMurderAndJa...

elliekelly• 6 years ago

There’s an entire industry built around moving very expensive art so that you don’t have to pay any taxes on it. Switzerland and Monaco (and I’m sure others) have “free ports” where expensive art that is bought as an investment can be stored tax free. It’s kind of like storing the painting at the international departures gate in perpetuity.

Since it would be a pity to spend so much on a painting you never get to see there are companies that will create a replica of your beautiful tax liability so that you can enjoy your multi-million dollar investment. Rumor has it these replicas are so good they occasionally get “mistaken” for the real thing and the worthless art ends up in storage while the expensive art ends up hanging in the wealthy collector’s living room tax-free. Oops. Classic mixup.

TheSpiceIsLife• 6 years ago

For further reading, Wikipedia has a list of freeports.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_economic_zones

microtherion• 6 years ago

Is this kind of thing [tax evasion] common in the art world?

Oh yes, it seems so common that it's more or less openly advertised:

https://www.wealthmanagement.com/art-auctions-antiques-repor...

And art collectors are not infrequently involved in shady schemes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urs_Schwarzenbach#VAT_fraud_an...

redisman• 6 years ago

The super rich play a completely different game than the rest of us.

karaterobot• 6 years ago

I wonder if this is actually tax evasion. I think the idea behind this was to avoid a taxable event from taking place, not to lie in order to avoid paying taxes they legally had to. It's analogous to me driving out of my way to avoid going over a toll bridge, vs. (for example) covering up my license plate to avoid being caught by the toll cameras.

RyJones• 6 years ago

Boeing, for years, 'delivered' jets at the Portland, Oregon airport to avoid Washington state sales tax.

ck2• 6 years ago

Forget the artwork ethics, Hobby Lobby owners are notorious.

Forced people to come to work at their stores despite orders to close during pandemic as definitely not "essential". Their reason? "god" spoke to owner's wife and said to stay open.

You also may remember them from suing against ACA for religion exemptions against allowing their employees to have access to the pill under insurance (they oddly won).

totalZero• 6 years ago

Wait, your problem is with the actions taken to avoid a taxable event in New York by a buyer in Oklahoma?

This is the same as when you buy something on Amazon and the tax is based on your delivery destination, rather than Amazon's distribution centers or headquarters. It is lawful and makes sense.

legerdemain2• 6 years ago

One of the outcomes of the US-Iraq war was Iraq's national heritage of antiquities getting plundered and sold illegally.[1]

The burning of the Library of Alexandria is a potent symbol in Western culture, but the world has repeatedly suffered massive losses of cultural and historical artifacts in the last few decades. The public quickly develops historical amnesia for recent events. Compare, for example, the loss of Brazil's National Museum to a fire two years ago.[2]

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/ir...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/fire-engulfs-b...

edited: clarity and link formatting

keiferski2• 6 years ago

The destruction of Baghdad itself, including the House of Wisdom (large library), by the Mongols in 1258 is probably a more apt comparison.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)

deathgrips7• 6 years ago

What a tragedy. Most westerners don't realize that when Europeans were living in mud huts and emptying their chamber pots into the streets, the Muslim world had plumbing, water filtration, surgery, advanced mathematics, and many more amazing scientific advances which quickly spread throughout Muslim countries due to the cultural exchange at Mecca. I wonder what the world could have been like if the Mongols had never destroyed so much civilization and progress.

emmelaich• 6 years ago

A modern equivalent (sorta) -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire

deathgrips7• 6 years ago

Another example is shutting down What.cd, which was a digital library that had an unbelievably large collection of music. Many titles couldn't be found anywhere except on What.cd.

bfors• 6 years ago

Granted, a lot of that music probably wasn't amazing. But as an archive and community what.cd was unmatched, and I'm still upset that it's gone. RIP

whywhywhywhy• 6 years ago

License holders honestly can't be trusted with archiving or distributing their own works.

So much music and movies is available in inferior or compromised formats if you go through the versions available on the market today from the license owners.

RcouF1uZ4gsC2• 6 years ago

Ironically, purely from an amoral preservation point of view, having the antiquities in a museum in the United States or Western Europe has a higher chance of preserving the artifact for future generations.

jhbadger• 6 years ago

That's the argument that the British Museum uses to justify its collection (much of which was obtained through colonialism). Many countries (even Western ones like Greece) would like their stuff back.

hrktb• 6 years ago

Granted. Though there’s an argument on what preserving the antiquities is for in the first place.

If we think there is a value provided to visitors seeing them in person, then preserving them far away deprives the Iraqi from these benefits making the preservation neutral at best in the short/middle term (long term? will it ever come back ?). It might feel like having your pet living abroad in a shelter, on one side it gets to live, on the other it doesn’t help you much to cope with your life.

MandieD• 6 years ago

Aside from a couple brief but extremely violent periods this past century, sure. The city I live by had its old town reduced to rubble in 1944-45 and is still rebuilding, despite being in one of the most prosperous regions of a rich, powerful country. The Germanisches National Museum wasn't spared, and they still lost stuff, despite preparing for bombardment. Countless works of art were destroyed throughout the city, despite the citizenry's pride in their cultural heritage.

Or maybe because of an excess of pride in that cultural heritage, if you look at the big picture...

I'm talking about Nuremberg/Nürnberg, of course. I love living here now, but oh boy was the evil of an evil time concentrated here. It's hard to reconcile the lovely place I live now with what I grew up learning about it, to the extent that I think of it as Nürnberg today, but Nuremberg when considering the horrors of the 30s and 40s.

Big Western countries don't have constant, low-level instability like our former colonies - we have rare but all-encompassing blowouts. We've just been lucky in the US and Canada that geography protected us for so long (aside from the evil various European powers visited upon people we encountered or forcibly brought there).

More historically, think about spasmodic but intense episodes in the West, like the iconoclastism during the Protestant Reformation. Good luck to any ancient religious art that happened to be in Switzerland at the time... and think about the various flavors of religious nuttery in the US, now being concentrated and inflamed with social media. The Hobby Lobby founders fortunately wanted these artifacts as evidence for their flavor of religious nuttery, but what would have stopped them from acquiring artifacts that they felt needed to be destroyed?

grumple• 6 years ago

This is basically the plot to Three Kings, which was set during our first time in Iraq.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kings_(1999_film)

deepnotderp2• 6 years ago

The Burning of the Library of Alexandria was neither intentional nor absolute. A better example is the burning of the House of Wisdom by the Ilkhanate Mongols

legerdemain2• 6 years ago

My point was that people often point to the burning of the Library of Alexandria as some kind of pivotal tragedy in Western history. But in reality, the world loses huge chunks of unique stuff in our time, irretrievably. Stuff like animal species and human communities and one-of-a-kind historic artifacts. We then soon forget that anything was lost and tell each other just-so stories with zero historical perspective.

khawkins• 6 years ago

Given the region's susceptibility to Islamic State uprisings, I'm not convinced Iraq and Syria are going to be good stewards of antiquities in the long-run. [1][2] These areas haven't been stable for decades.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_cultural_herita...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Mosul_Museum_ar...

sonofhans• 6 years ago

Well, one of these artifacts looks to have been in that region of the world for over 5000 years. That's a pretty good track record.

I'm sure the citizens of Philly wouldn't be susceptible to any arguments that Baghdad would be a better place to store the Liberty Bell.

nemo8• 6 years ago

It's worth thinking through the question of whether Iraq or Syria would not be entitled to see stolen property returned due to destabilization. Right now the possessor of the stolen property is an American who also has trafficked in a number of items which were looted in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq (this particular tablet was stolen earlier).

Art theft is a real issue in the US and Europe. If an art thief stole then sold a painting owned by an American to someone in China, would you support seeing the stolen property returned to the original owner? Would you take seriously the idea that the owner wasn't entitled to have their stolen property returned since there was a non-trivial chance the art could be stolen again?

newyankee2• 6 years ago

A good example would be the destruction of Bamiya Budha statues in Afghanistan by the Taliban

sydd• 6 years ago

but its still theirs. USA or any other nation has no right to take it. Its like China would take the declaration of independence for "safekeeping"

djsumdog• 6 years ago

The documentary No End in Sight talks a lot about the looting of national museums. It was tragic and entirely preventable, but the US did not commit enough troops and did not have a plan for reconstruction or securing anything other than oil fields.

lopmotr2• 6 years ago

Something 1000s of years old hardly belongs to any particular modern country. Perhaps if whoever is looking after it can't protect it from theft, they don't deserve to be looking after it and it's better that it got stolen. If an entire country is too weak to protect artifacts, then they should be given to somewhere that has that capability.

Who would want to return artifacts to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan just because the Taliban happened to control that piece of land at the time? Nobody cares about some little political group on the scale of 1000s of years.

daseiner13• 6 years ago

so you feel the same about the elgin marbles, presumably? because i absolutely adored seeing them at the British Museum, but it sorta feels to me like they ought to be returned to Athens

cm21872• 6 years ago

It depends on the definition of lost. I would argue that an artefact is better protected in a museum in Washington DC rather than in a country in a state of civil war.

Then the debate isn't so much about being lost, but whether the artefact should be located in the country where it was originally created, thousands of years ago.

And I think you can see it both ways. I don't understand people who identify themselves to the population that lived on the same territory centuries ago. It is a different people, a different culture, and there might be some trace of that culture left (like there are traces of the roman empire culture left all over europe), there might be some artefacts, some monuments left. But they are really a foreign people to the current inabitants. So should St Mark's Basilica in venice be destroyed to return the looted parts to Turkey? Or should the Lyxor obelisk on the place de la Concorde in Paris be returned to Egypt? I don't think so.

chx• 6 years ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t6op5/facts...

> I am curious about what knowledge was lost in the fire,
Probably next to nothing, and certainly nothing of importance was lost. Alexandria was hardly the only library in the world, and the libraries at Pergamum and later Rome herself rivaled Alexandria in scale. Antony replaced the losses of the fire during the Alexandrine War with copies made from the library at Pergamum, and libraries in gymnasia or simply founded for citizens abound during that period in the Greek world, they're in like literally every city of any size.
We do not lose texts because of catastrophic events that wipe out all copies of them. We lose texts because they stop being copied.

Also check https://www.ancient.eu/article/207/what-happened-to-the-grea...

MikeKusold• 6 years ago

"Whenever looted cultural property is found in this country, the United States government will do all it can to preserve heritage by returning such artifacts where they belong,"

How does this tablet differ from any other artifact in a museum? Couldn't it be argued that any ancient artifact from another culture is stolen?

triceratops7• 6 years ago

I think it's basically a function of when the artifact was taken. Older generations (I'm thinking pre 1900s) of historians, archeologists and explorers didn't think anything of it. And often in the colonial era, there wasn't a native government or state that could take possession of those artifacts. From reading history books, I think there was more of a finders-keepers mentality back then. EDIT: from reading another comment, it seems like 1970 is the cut-off.

The same actions today would be considered deeply uncool (which they are IMO), and also illegal in many jurisdictions. It's not right for a country's cultural treasures to be put on display permanently (loans are OK, I guess) in a museum thousands of miles away where most of the people of that country have no chance of admiring them.

ABeeSea• 6 years ago

It also breaks apart a potential comprehensive collection. The Mayan collection from the Guatemalan government is currently in a traveling tour. Saw it in Vancouver as a special exhibit and it was a truly great exhibit that would be impossible if all those pieces were in different collections around the world.

sephlietz• 6 years ago

Recency.

vkou• 6 years ago

The same way that we generally speaking don't respect land rights of native people who were displaced by settlers hundreds of years ago, but we do respect your land rights, if I were to displace you, by 'settling' into your house.

There's a gradient between the two, and the line between them tends to be drawn rather arbitrarily - but it does exist.

distances• 6 years ago

How does this tablet differ from any other artifact in a museum? Couldn't it be argued that any ancient artifact from another culture is stolen?

Lots of the early archeology exported antiquities legally. At the time most of the Middle East, Greece included, was ruled by the Ottoman Empire that granted official permissions for western archeologists to take objects or even whole buildings and edifices. I'm not well enough versed in the topic to know what deals covered these actions, whether they were shady in some degree or if the Empire just didn't care that much.

One of the more famous and contentious examples is the Elgin Marbles: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles

thaumasiotes2• 6 years ago

Lots of the early archeology exported antiquities legally. At the time most of the Middle East, Greece included, was ruled by the Ottoman Empire that granted official permissions for western archeologists to take objects or even whole buildings and edifices.

But this answer can't satisfy anyone who cares about the issue, because there's no good argument that these exports were legitimate, just legal. Compare the Soviet Union's early efforts to sell off treasure and art belonging to the Czar -- they couldn't do it, because no one would buy their stolen goods. (Eventually, this broke down as the Soviets stayed in power.)

Saying it's fine for the British Museum to have Greek antiquities because the Ottoman Empire, the mortal enemies of the Greeks, gave them permission to take whatever they wanted... looks ridiculous. Imagine China freely granting permission to foreign archaeologists to dismantle and export Tibetan palaces and monasteries.

aeturnum• 6 years ago

Many historical artifacts were obtained under conditions we would not repeat today. You could argue that almost all artifacts of other cultures in western museums are stolen, but not everyone goes that far.

The British Museum is embroiled in many such controversies[1] and has put up statements around their Parthenon sculptures[2]. Large artifacts have been returned by nation states[3].

Generally, as I understand it, museums will keep artifacts they obtained under a framework that was legal at the time of its construction. Modern critics point out that these legal frameworks likely would not have been accepted by the population of the country giving up the artifact.

The Hobby Lobby artifacts do not even have a questionable legal framework as a fig leaf over their theft. They were taken in violation of international law as well as Iraqi and US law.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/04/british-museum...

[2] https://www.britishmuseum.org/parthenon-sculptures-trustees-...

[3] https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/116

hinkley• 6 years ago

The British Museum was disappointing to me. I don't know what they're doing with the space, but if someone had told me that the British Museum was the same size as the Art Institute of Chicago it would have turned into an argument.

Meanwhile the Louvre is so big (>2.5x the size) that you have to pace yourself.

But that's not what was really disappointing. I had a vague comprehension that the British Museum contained artifacts that other countries wanted repatriated, and then I walked in and I knew. I knew exactly what they were talking about.

It didn't feel like a museum. It felt like I had wandered into a pirates treasure cave. Other museums have works that were purchased through channels, or loaned out. They have cultural artifacts and archaeological pieces that are contemporary to the region, offering vignettes into history, how we got to be here today.

I was just looking at colonial plunder. In an era where sane people would be scrambling to define themselves any other way.

randyrand3• 6 years ago

At one point in time that tablet was owned by an individual. Who is to say some artifact can only be owned by the originating geography’s government, and not an individual, or other government?

What matters most to me is whether it was stolen or whether it was legally sold, legally abandoned, etc

dehrmann• 6 years ago

Every few years, there's a story about people wanting the Mona Lisa returned to Italy.

JoeAltmaier10• 6 years ago

Kind of sad all around. The table was essentially rescued from ignominy. But of course it belongs to Iraq. Then it'll probably just disappear again. Sigh.

crazygringo• 6 years ago

Then it'll probably just disappear again. Sigh.

What are you basing that on?

JoeAltmaier10• 6 years ago

Oh is Iraq's government stable again? Are the people not at risk of hunger? Will the sanctity of museums be observed now and in the future, uninterrupted?

The Elgin marbles are safe in the British Museum. Would they have been safe, left where they were found, for 100 years?

Being PC about antiquities is intellectually interesting. But practically, it means many antiquities will be broken up, lost or hidden.

burfog• 6 years ago

The government could even want this. For example:

The tablet leaves the country. The government is aware, but pretends otherwise. Money flows into the country to pay for the tablet. The government reports the tablet missing, then gets it back. Repeat, for a nice flow of cash.

Selling the same object multiple times must be profitable.

chadlavi2• 6 years ago

what a bizarre timeline we live in

(edit: to be clear what I mean is that it's extremely bizarre that a discount tchochke store in the US would own an extremely precious Mesopotamian artifact in the first place, not bizarre that justice is actually being done about it)

aaronbrethorst3• 6 years ago

It's not that weird. The founder of Hobby Lobby is an evangelical Christian, among other things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Green_(entrepreneur)

chadlavi2• 6 years ago

tbh that guy's whole deal only makes it weirder

ctdonath5• 6 years ago

Not weird. Chain owner has a HUGE collection of extremely precious religious/historical artifacts. I've seen it, staggering - a museum unto itself.

selimthegrim4• 6 years ago

This sounds like the beginning of a horror movie you'd find on Lifetime or Hallmark, but where the ancient Mesopotamian evil accepts Christ and sits down for tea and cakes with the children like in Narnia.

davidw• 6 years ago

"Ned Flanders comes into possession of an ancient evil stone tablet and makes Homer do his bidding"

aaronbrethorst3• 6 years ago

Seems more likely that Ned Flanders would come into possession of an ancient, cursed monkey's paw...

selimthegrim4• 6 years ago

Clearly someone didn't see the episode with the re-neducation camps...

selimthegrim4• 6 years ago

Or maybe JHU, given their financial exigency of late?

http://washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/heavily-in-debt-ne...

Apocryphon• 6 years ago

It's literally the beginning of The Exorcist

grillvogel• 6 years ago

weren't a lot of the remaining artifacts just getting destroyed recently anyway?

desireco42• 6 years ago

This NPR, source we should trust. It carefully avoids to say that tablet was stollen from Iraq during US invasion. Whole museums and collections were stollen during that time by advancing US soldiers and "contractors".

I highly doubt HobbyLobby owners didn't know origin of this tablet.

doktrin• 6 years ago

Since the article claims the tablet was in London "in or before 2001" it couldn't have been looted during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

sandworm101• 6 years ago

The tablet is real? A bunch of the Hobby Lobby / Museum of the Bible scrolls turned out to be fake.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/dead-sea-s...

"Hobby Lobby said that it was new to the world of antiquities when it began acquiring historical items for its Museum of the Bible in 2009 and made mistakes in relying on dealers and shippers who “did not understand the correct way to document and ship” them."

iamleppert• 6 years ago

It's just going to go back there and be stolen again, so what's the point? At least where it is now it is protected and on display to the public.

dependenttypes• 6 years ago

Here are some more similar cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles

ctdonath5• 6 years ago

NYTimes:

"In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, Hobby Lobby accused the auction house Christie’s of “deceitful and fraudulent conduct” in connection with an ancient tablet bearing a fragment of Gilgamesh. The suit claims “fraud and breach of express and implied warrant” in connection with the tablet, and seeks the return of what it paid for the tablet. In a statement on Tuesday, Christie’s said the lawsuit was related to an unidentified dealer’s admission of illegal activity “predating Christie’s involvement” with the tablet."

Interesting how few are interested in the defense that Hobby Lobby was a victim.

boomboomsubban9• 6 years ago

Interesting how few are interested in the defense that Hobby Lobby was a victim.

They weren't. With this tablet, maybe they never had any solid reason to suspect it had been looted. This wasn't the only artifact they bought, other items had no documentation detailing their history and they made purchases after being warned that items were likely illegal. It's doubtful they tried very hard to verify this tablets history given their record.

There are other criminals involved, but Hobby Lobby was not a victim.

3fe9a03ccd14ca54• 6 years ago

Kinda like when you buy a used car at auction, but it turns out it was stolen.

mcv3• 6 years ago

Why are such auctions even allowed? Or was this an illegal auction? It seems to me that any respectable auction house has an obligation to ensure that their service is not abused to fence stolen goods.

luckydata6• 6 years ago

gee, who would have thought that a super rare artifact well known for being in a specific museum in a specific country ravaged by war and all of a sudden showing up at auction would be stolen. They must have done a hell of a job with their due diligence.

kapilvt• 6 years ago

compared to the 99% of the rest of museums in dc, which are publicly funded, the Bible museum was private and needed to show return on investment which was covid interuppted, especially after it just opened and took over newseum real estate (capital prime).

TigeriusKirk• 6 years ago

I mean, one of the top auction houses in the world assured them it had a spotless provenance.

HL is still culpable here, but Christie's absolutely is guilty too.

ctdonath5• 6 years ago

Also interesting how NYTimes doesn't even mention Christie's until paragraph 20.

boomboomsubban9• 6 years ago

Even if that lawsuit is successful against Christie's, Hobby Lobby's actions were still illegal. Who cares who is on the hook for the auction price?

triceratops7• 6 years ago

It seems like they were warned in 2010.[1] They're a museum, surely they have experts on staff who can evaluate and verify what they're buying.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/nyregion/hobby-lobby-arti...

cwhiz• 6 years ago

Not going to find much sympathy for Hobby Lobby on Reddit or HN.

justin66• 6 years ago

Interesting how few are interested in the defense that Hobby Lobby was a victim.

This is just one page in the years-long story of Hobby Lobby's theft of thousands of antiquities. [1] Their attempt to pin one little piece of it on Christie's would, regardless of its legal merits, be met with boredom or skepticism even if the company weren't run by far-right religious fanatics.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/united-states-files-civ...

rsynnott3• 6 years ago

Interesting how few are interested in the defense that Hobby Lobby was a victim.

Is it particularly credible? Like, this is a notoriously dodgy field where it's really up to the purchaser to do due diligence.

woodrowbarlow• 6 years ago

Interesting how few are interested in the defense that Hobby Lobby was a victim.

hobby lobby is family owned and the family uses the company as a piggy bank for their museum of the bible. they have had multiple scandals involving counterfeits and artifacts of undocumented provenance over the last ten years. their negligence is beyond doubt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_Lobby_smuggling_scandal

abiogenesis• 6 years ago

I'm amazed that "[...] fragment of the oldest known creation tale" is only worth $1.6 million. What is even more amazing is its (recent) history:

The U.S. dealer bought several pieces, including the Gilgamesh tablet, for $50,350.

boomboomsubban9• 6 years ago

Every time that the fragment was sold their were at least concerns that it was stolen, which likely drove down the price.

johnmarinelli• 6 years ago

Hopefully Germany will do the same with the Bust of Nefertiti.

AndyMcConachie• 6 years ago

How is this any different than basically everything in the British Museum?

yters• 6 years ago

Aren't most museum pieces in the west pilfered? I say we send it all back.

MH15• 6 years ago

"The United States of America v. Approximately Four Hundred Fifty (450) Ancient Cuneiform Tablets" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_Lobby_smuggling_scandal

Andrex• 6 years ago

One of my favorite random Wikipedia finds:

"United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Approximately...

In rem cases have fun titles in general. :D

sschueller• 6 years ago

While we are at it. The United Kingdom should return all the artifacts it stole from Egypt.

Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq

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