Those Cuneiform Tablets Stolen From Iraq… Again…

tabletsJoseph P Farrell – This is a story that, as one might imagine, I cannot help but speculate about. It was shared by Ms. M.W. The story itself contains a number of statements I find intriguing, if not downright provocative and suggestive:

Stolen Sumerian Tablets Come from the Lost City of Irisagrig

There’s so much potential for speculation here that I hardly know where to begin. Suppose we start here: the tablets, which were purchased by Hobby Lobby, and later discovered to have been stolen, are being returned to Iraq, and presumably, to the Baghdad Museum (we’ll get back to that interesting connection later). What’s intriguing here is the content of the tablets:

Hundreds of 4,000 year old tablets that were looted in Iraq and bought by the U.S. company Hobby Lobby seem to hail from a mysterious Sumerian city whose whereabouts are unknown, a U.S. law enforcement agency just announced. Continue reading

Hobby Lobby Fined For Importing Stolen Artifacts

tabletsJoseph P Farrell – This week has been such an unusually fruitful week for articles being shared that, today, Saturday, I am still combing through them to decide on what to schedule for blogs this coming week! So I want to thank everyone once again for sharing so many good finds, making the choice of what to blog about more difficult and, in a way, more fun. Some of these articles I have in fact archived for next week, as I may yet blog about them.

But this story had to be at the top of the list. Indeed, when I saw it, there was no doubt in my mind that it was at the top of the “final cuts” folder. So many people found various versions of it that I knew there was something in the aether and that this story would require some attention. So I present some of those various versions that people found for your consideration, before I get to my high octane speculation about the story, with a thank you to all of you who shared these articles and who are following the story:

Hobby Lobby to pay $3 million fine, forfeit smuggled ancient artifacts

Hobby Lobby will pay $3 million, forfeit ancient items smuggled from Iraq

Justice Department sues Hobby Lobby over thousands of looted Iraqi artifacts it bought

Let’s begin with the last of these articles, which indicates that Israel and the United Arab Emirates were involved in the deal. What is unclear, of course, is whether the individuals and organizations that functioned as components of the deal were simply located in these countries, or whether they were actually members of their governments. For reasons I’ll get to in the high octane speculation, I suspect the latter. Continue reading