Larry Buie just wanted to help Eddie make a little money from a clay tablet that may date back to antiquity. Instead, Eddie may be looking at a hard line of questioning.A museum official said she thinks the tablet with the foreign symbols may have been smuggled out of the Middle East.“We’re talking FBI,” said Margaret Schroeder, who works with the museum at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. “This is illegal. It ain’t an obvious copy.”The institute is devoted to the study of early Near Eastern civilizations. A reporter e-mailed photographs of the tablet to the museum Monday in hopes of determining its authenticity.The artifact, Schroeder said, appears to be from the Ur III empire from around 2300 B.C. The Ur III Dynasty was a period when the city of Ur dominated Mesopotamia — part of modern-day Iraq. It gave the ancient country a century of peace and prosperity. “If it’s authentic, it’s potentially a very valuable piece,” said Ken Robinson, director of public archaeology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem.It also could get somebody in a lot of trouble.“This is the sort of thing being smuggled out of Iraq,” Schroeder said. “This is the sort of thing that is nasty.”After examining the pictures, Schroeder said, she contacted the FBI.Newsom Summerlin, an FBI spokesman for the Charlotte division, said Wednesday that the FBI neither confirms nor denies investigations as a matter of general policy.

The Charlotte division includes Fayetteville.Buie said he did not steal the tablet.He said one of his tenants, whom he identified only as Eddie for publication, didn’t steal it, either.Buie, who is 56, said Eddie gave him the tablet about six months ago. They worked out a deal, Buie said, in which they would split any profits if Buie could sell it.“I’m going to do what’s right by it,” he said.Buie can be vague on details. He said Eddie lives rent-free in one of his rental houses in St. Pauls. Eddie is a drywall hanger who has worked for Buie and now has health problems.According to Buie, Eddie has had the tablet for at least a couple of years. “He had it long before his wife died. I think it came out of Pennsylvania,” he said.As the story goes, a girl brought the tablet along when she visited Eddie’s wife. Somehow, Eddie’s wife wound up with it.Buie said he doesn’t know much else about the artifact’s recent history.Or, for that matter, its ancient history.

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Didi anybody check if it is one of those that disappeared in Iraq?

Do you really think that with the all the strife we (I'm an American) whipped on Iraq that tracking a lost museum piece is high on anyones priority list in Iraq right now? We don't know where guns, ammo, and 8 BILLION Dollars went. The Iraquis (those that are still there-most academics as well as anyone else of means have left) don't know where the water and food are. But we know damned well where the bloody oil is.

The criminal element in Iraq, as opposed to the criminal element in the Beltway or the criminal element we sent to Iraq, was ready to pluck the museums clean when we decided to launch our wonderful liberation of the country. And they liberated the hell out of the museums. Saddam may have been a butcher but he kept an iron fist on the country's historical treasures because he wanted to appear more legitimate. Whatever the reason he managed to keep this sort of looting which is sort of common in the region to a minimum. The museum personel TRIED to save things and may have been succesful in some cases but in the end I seriously doubt if we will ever know what was exactly lost. Chalk up another accomplishment for the DECIDER!
Cheers,
RWB64

it would seem that war plunders are a basic fact of war we should take a better look at how this story unfolds, maybe SaRuMaN can keep us updated on this story

I just found it interesting that Mesopotamia is in modern day Iraq. See the things you learn by checking UM everyday?!

It looks to me like someone stole it, maybe not this guy but perhaps the girl that gave it to his wife, or perhaps it belonged to that girls family and was passed down from, blah blah blah, no one would just give that away, it was stolen for sure by someone, at sometime.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ELI401A.html
Spoils of War:
The Antiquities Trade and the Looting of Iraq

What is being lost.....

an interesting film

While the illegal smuggling of artifacts is a concern is there any proof this one particular tablet was not found before the war? It could have possibly been taken out of Iraq around or more years ago as well? Just speculating but without proof that this item was in fact in Iraq when the war began and only taken out afterwards it might be another matter altogether. Who is to say it was not taken out of Iraq even before any law to protect artifacts was drafted in modern times or even before the FBI existed?