Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation hands over brick fragment from the 3rd millennium BC to Iraq
Press release from 04/28/2015
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation today handed over a brick fragment from the 3rd millennium BC to Iraq. A private individual sent the valuable piece by post to the Vorderasiatisches Museum of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in March 2015 and gave it to the museum as a gift for further safekeeping. The private individual had claimed to have received the fragment as a gift "as a souvenir" in southern Iraq in the 1980s.
A Sumerian inscription has now been reconstructed following scientific analysis in the museum. According to this, it is a dedicatory inscription by the ancient oriental ruler Amar-Suena (mid-21st century BC), who speaks of having built a temple to the god Enki. The brick fragment most probably comes from the ancient city of Eridu (today Tell Abu Shahren) in southern Iraq. Hermann Parzinger, President of the SPK, and Markus Hilgert, Director of the Vorderasiatisches Museum, immediately sought contact with the Ambassador of the Republic of Iraq, Hussain M. F. Alkhateeb, in order to hand over the object to the country of origin.
Hermann Parzinger says: "I attach great importance to ensuring that obviously illegally exported objects do not end up in our collections. This is in keeping with our responsibility for the cultural heritage of mankind." The SPK's archaeological collections preserve, develop, research and present the cultural assets entrusted to them. They do this in close co-operation with the countries of origin. The Museum of the Ancient Near East has a globally significant reference collection for the archaeological cultural heritage of ancient Near Eastern societies and makes it accessible to the public. The collection has not grown for many years, as there are practically no legally excavated and exported artefacts on the market today.
The case has no criminal relevance, although the piece was exported in violation of Iraqi law at the time. The reason for this is that Germany had not yet ratified the 1970 UNESCO Convention at the time of import. This case shows once again how important it is to amend the Cultural Property Restitution Act.
The SPK therefore expressly welcomes the German government's initiative to tighten German laws against the illegal trade in archaeological artefacts. For its part, the Foundation supports this approach through scientific and practical measures such as the BMBF-funded dark field research project ILLICID, which is headed by the Director of the Museum of the Ancient Near East, Markus Hilgert.