A 3,500-year-old clay tablet that bears "Epic of Gilgamesh" and was purchased by Hobby Lobby for $1.6 million has been forfeited to the United States.

BAGHDAD (AP) — A small clay tablet dating back 3,500 years and bearing a portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh that was looted from an Iraqi museum 30 years ago and recently recovered from the United ...

A 3,500-year-old tablet featuring the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh has been returned to Iraq three decades after it was stolen and illegally imported to the US.

Federal authorities confiscate ancient tablet inscribed with the Epic of Gilgamesh that Hobby Lobby museum bought for $1.6m after it was discovered to have been looted by Iraqi troops Authorities ...

The Gilgamesh poem holds a special place in human history, in Iraqi history.” Hobby Lobby bought the tablet for almost $1.7m (£1.24m) in 2014 to display at the museum being built.

The 3,500 year-old clay tablet with a sequence from the epic of Gilgamesh, which once sat in Washington's Museum of the Bible, was seized by the US Justice Department in 2019.

The tablet was sold once again in 2014 for $1.67 million to the owners of craft chain Hobby Lobb y, the Green family, fundamentalist Christians who wanted to display the stone at their Museum of ...

The unnamed antiquities dealer bought several pieces for $50,000 and shipped them to the US and, after cleaning the tablets, realized that one of them included a part of the “Epic of Gilgamesh.” ...

A 3,500-year-old clay tablet bearing a portion of the “Epic of Gilgamesh” that was purchased by the Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. retail chain for $1.6 million has been forfeited to the U.S. government.

According to the DOJ, the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet was smuggled into the US and then auctioned off. The ancient tablet had been bought by Oklahoma-based arts and craft superstore Hobby Lobby.

The events revolve around King Gilgamesh of Uruk - an area corresponding to southern Iraq. The myth is based on a real king who ruled sometime between 2,800 and 2,500 BC.

The $1.7 million cuneiform tablet, known as the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, is one of the world’s oldest surviving works of literature and one of the oldest religious texts.