At the end of February a number of antiquities and other pieces of cultural property were handed over to Iraqi authorities. The objects had all been recovered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). A statement made by John Morton (ICE Assistant Secretary) affirmed the U.S. commitment to investigate those who seek to "rob a nation for personal gain".
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Among the items was a pair of Neo-Assyrian gold earrings. They are reported to have been found in 1988 "under the floor of the Royal Palace of King Ashur-Nasir-
Another returned object was a Babylonian clay foundation cone dating to ca. 2100 BC. The inscription on the cone indicates that it came from a temple at Girsu, modern Tell Telloh in southern Iraq. The item had been recovered as it arrived at Chicago.
Two other pieces, a Sumerian bronze foundation cone and a stone tablet, were intercepted at Newark, New Jersey after being dispatched from a dealer in London, England. It is reported that they had been found in Syria but the Sumerian texts indicated that they had been placed in a temple in Iraq. The use of 'Syria' as the place of origin on import documents has been reported before with antiquities from Iraq.
A further item that was handed over was an AK-47 bearing an image of Saddam Hussein. This had been removed from Iraq as a "war trophy".
A number of antiquities seized in New York auction-houses were returned to Italy last year. This suggests that elements of the antiquities market needs to develop a more rigorous "due diligence" process to ensure that recently looted or stolen antiquities do not surface in North America.
