First legal, then diplomatic obstacles had to be overcome before part of a huge collection of cuneiform clay tablets could be returned to Iran. 

During the 1930s a collection of some 30,000 cuneiform tablets or tablet fragments, discovered in the ruins of Persepolis, capital of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, were sent on loan to the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago for study and analysis. It was always intended the tablets would be returned to Iran.

As the University completed their research on the tablets, a process of returning them to Iran got underway. Three separate tranches were repatriated between 1948 and 2004. However, the return of a fourth tranche, which comprised almost 1800 clay tablets, was blocked by legal action, initiated by a group of American survivors of an attack in Israel carried out in 1997 by the Palestinian group Hamas.

The group demanded the seizure of this fourth tranche and the proceeds of their sale retained as financial compensation for the attack. 

After a drawn-out legal dispute, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in February last year against the survivors group and banned the seizure of the tablets. However, the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions on the Islamic Republic in August 2018 again frustrated their repatriation. 

This month, after lengthy administrative exchanges between the National Museum of Iran and various U.S. government departments, including the U.S. Treasury, around 300 from a group of 1800 tablets returned were placed on exhibition at the Museum in Tehran.

Speaking to AFP, Christopher Woods , head of Chicago University’s Oriental Institute, referring to the efforts and legal expenses they incurred before the U.S. Supreme Court decision, said “We fought very hard to keep them safe and spent millions of dollars so that we could return them”.

“Hopefully we’ll return the second batch much faster and it will be a larger group,” added Woods. 

Even the process of packing up these tablets for repatriation has been a delicate and lengthy process. According to Woods, packing this latest tranche of almost 1800 items took about six months.

Dating to the Persian Achaemenid Empire (6th to 4th Cent BC), these tablets have provided valuable information about how this society was organised and “how basic institutions of control and support worked”, said Matthew Stolper, Professor Emeritus at the Oriental Institute. 

“We’ve learned the names of some of the important people in the ruling class, he continued, “but more importantly, we learned how they ruled”.

About 17,000 tablets from the original cache are still being studied in the United States. 

Photo: Clay tablet with cuneiform inscription, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons