Inscribed tablet from ancient Mesopotamia?

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.

View: Full Article | Source: Fay Observer

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

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

It has been called the worst cultural disaster to happen since the Second World War, and one archaeologist has likened it to a "lobotomy of an entire culture." (1) To the dismay of archaeologists throughout the world, the toppling of the Iraqi government by U.S. troops unleashed a wave of looting and destruction of Iraq’s national patrimony. Despite pleas for action from outraged scholars, the culturally blinkered Bush Administration remained indifferent, belatedly acting only when media coverage mushroomed into a public relations fiasco that threatened to upend the manufactured image of benign liberation. Although the scale of loss from the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad was less serious than initially indicated, it was nevertheless a crippling blow, while elsewhere in Iraq the situation ran alarmingly out of control.

What is being lost.....

an interesting film

Mesopotamia, or 'the country between two rivers', is the oldest civilisation to have flourished at the confluence of two rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Mesopotamians included various peoples, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Akkadians, who coexisted and succeeded one another, mixing and inter-relating in a Near East with a wide range of racial facets. These different peoples, who once lived along the banks of the two rivers, have left behind an archaeological heritage of inestimable value.How did they flourish in such a hostile environment? Where did their wealth come from? And how did this perfectly structured civilisation finally fade and disappear for ever?

This popular series gives new insights into some of the most influential civilisations to shape the world as we know it. To understand where we are now, it might help to understand where we have been.

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?