Hobby Lobby's $1.6 Million Purchase Of Illegal Antiquities Looted From Iraq

Recently, Hobby Lobby president Steve Green opened a new museum in Washington, D.C. It's called the "Museum of the Bible." In it, 250 clay tablets from the ancient Sumerian city called Irisagrig, each 4,000 years old, were supposed to be displayed.

They'd apparently been purchased illegally from smugglers, likely looted from Iraq after the 2003 American invasion of the country. 

NPR reports that the museum contains an additional $201 million worth of ancient artifacts "tied to Hobby Lobby." 

In a settlement last year with the Justice Department, Hobby Lobby agreed to forfeit the objects and paid a $3 million fine. In May, about 3,800 objects were handed back to the Iraqi government at a ceremony at its Washington, D.C., embassy, and will be returned to Iraq later this year.

...Apart from the Irisagrig archive, the Hobby Lobby artifacts that are being returned to Iraq also include tablets dating from about 2500 BCE (an alternative to "B.C." commonly used by scholars to denote "before the common era") with incantations to the gods, Babylonian letters from between 1900 and 1700 BCE and hymns from several hundred years BCE.

The museum denied that any of the stolen antiquities in the Hobby Lobby settlement were a part of their collection.

Around the world, theillicit trafficking in cultural property remains a pervasive problem. 

Hundreds, if not thousands, of priceless historical artifacts have long been stolen, traded, sold and passed through numerous hands only to be spirited away across multiple borders to private collectors in a black market estimated to be worth as much as $6.3 billion a year.