Authorities announce forfeiture of Gilgamesh tablet from Hobby Lobby's Museum of the Bible [View all]
Source: NBC News
Federal authorities announced the forfeiture Monday of an ancient tablet inscribed with part of the epic of Gilgamesh from a museum backed by the arts and crafts chain Hobby Lobby.
The piece, known as the “Gilgamesh Dream Tablet,” bearing a version of what's considered perhaps the world's oldest work of literature, was featured at the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. Hobby Lobby purchased it in 2014 for $1.6 million from an auction house that was later found to have lied about its origins, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York said.
The Oklahoma-based retailer was fined $3 million in 2017 after federal authorities said it bought thousands of artifacts for the museum that were smuggled from Iraq. The company opened the $500 million museum in November 2017.
The museum’s chairman, Steve Green, is the president of Hobby Lobby, which won a U.S. Supreme Court case in 2014 over the Affordable Care Act’s birth control requirements.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/authorities-announce-forfeiture-of-gilgamesh-tablet-from-hobby-lobbys-museum-of-the-bible/ar-BB14gLU2
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