Italy returns 2,800-year-old stolen Iraqi stone tablet

Italian authorities returned a 2,800-year-old stone tablet to Iraq after it had been stolen for four decades by handing it over to Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid in Bologna last week.

The artefact is inscribed with complete cuneiform text, a system of writing on clay in the ancient Babylonian alphabet.

How the tablet was found or went to Italy, where it was seized by police in the 1980s, is unknown.

“It might have been found during archaeological excavations of the Mosul Dam, which was built around that time,” said Iraqi Culture Minister Ahmed Badrani.

Rashid has praised the Italian cooperation, adding that he would work to recover all the archaeological pieces of Iraqi history from abroad.

Iraq has been known for the world’s first writing, as in the late eighth century, Bayt al-Hikmah was home to the largest library of books on science, art, math, medicine, and philosophy.