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Hundreds of ancient Sumerian tablets were plundered in Iraq and purchased by the American company known as Hobby Lobby. These ancient archeological remains are believed to have come from the Irisagrig lost city of Sumer, the exact location of which is not known until now.
The US government has confiscated these Sumerian tablets, which are just a fraction of the several thousand lost artifacts, and is on the verge of shipping them back to Iraq.
Of the four hundred and fifty tablets seized, many would come from the old city called Irisagrig. The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement stated that these tablets have been dated as originating from between 2,100 and 1,600 BC.
Also, the majority of these tablets appears to be simply legal, economic and administrative texts that have served to facilitate the life of the city’s government and the management of affairs between citizens, in ancient Summer.
The tablets have been stolen from a local antique market
Manuel Molina, a professor at the National Research Council of Spain, wrote that Irisagrig was a Sumerian city which has never been the object of an archaeological excavation and whose location remains yet not known.
The exact location of this site has been debated by researchers but without success and Molina added that a number of Irisagrig tablets have been put up for sale on a local antique market, in the past years, and may have been plundered in the last few months, indeed.
A number of other ancient artifacts have also been found along with the ancient Sumerian tablets about the Irisagrig lost city
Besides the more than 400 tablets in cuneiform, the US government also confiscated several thousands of clay bubbles, tiny inscribed texts used to identify individuals, plus a few cylindrical seals.
According to the official releases, some of the clay bubbles date from the Parthian Empire and the Sasanian Empire, which ruled over ancient Iraq between 2,200 and 1,400 BC.
However, some archaeologists are not unanimously agreed on shipping the ancient Sumerian tablets back to Iraq, as some of them propose to study the tablets further to determine a possible location for the Irisagrig lost city of Sumer, which would be a tremendous archaeological discovery.
