Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on February 12, 2015

By DANIEL ESTRIN Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) - At first glance, the ancient Babylonian tablets on exhibit for the first time at a Jerusalem museum look like nothing more than pockmarked lumps of clay.

But the 2,500-year-old treasures from present-day Iraq have become part of a thorny archaeological debate over how to handle historically significant relics thought to have been dug up in the fog of war by Mideast antiquities robbers.

Experts in cuneiform writing, one of the world's earliest scripts, say the collection of 110 cracker-sized clay tablets provides the earliest written evidence of the Biblical exile of the Judeans in what is now southern Iraq, offering new insight into a formative period of early Judaism.

The tablets, though, also tell a murkier story, from the present era, according to scholars familiar with the antiquities trade - a story of the chaos in Iraq and Syria that has led to rampant pilfering of rich archaeological heritage and a rush of cuneiform tablets on the international antiquities' market.

The collector who owns the tablets on display this month at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem, insists they were purchased legally, decades before that looting began. However, an ancient history scholar familiar with the artifacts disputes that.

Leading U.S. museums have pledged not to exhibit unprovenanced artifacts that have surfaced in recent decades, as part of an effort over the last decade to discourage illicit antiquities trafficking. But cuneiform inscriptions have emerged as a notable exception, with some arguing these relics would be lost to history if they did not make it into scholarly hands.

"We are not interested in anything that is illegally acquired or sneaked out," said Amanda Weiss, director of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem.

"But it is the role of a museum to protect these pieces," she added. "It's what we are here for."

The plundering of antiquities in the war-torn Middle East has become a primary concern for the archaeological community, and some archaeologists even compare satellite images of sites in Iraq and Syria to moonscapes, after antiquities robbers went through them.

See original here:
Ancient tablets displayed in Jerusalem fuel looting debate - Quincy Herald-Whig | Illinois & Missouri News, Sports

Category: Jewish American Heritage Month
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