Iraq recovers 2,800-year-old stone tablet from Italy

Iraqi Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Antiquities said on Sunday (18 June) that it recovered an archaeological stone tablet aged 2,800 years from Italy.

Culture Minister Ahmed Fakak Al-Badrani received the tablet of the Assyrian Empire from the Italian authorities while accompanying President Abdul Latif Rashid to Italy, a ministry statement said.

The tablet contains cuneiform writing glorifying Assyrian King Shalmaneser III, who ruled the region of Nimrod, in present-day northern Iraq, from 858 to 823BC and built the ziggurat of Nimrud city in the south of Iraq's northern city of Mosul, some 400km north of Baghdad, according to the statement.

Iraq is continuing cooperation with all archaeological and diplomatic authorities in the world to recover the Iraqi stolen and smuggled artefacts around the world, Al-Badrani noted.

According to official statistics, about 15,000 pieces of cultural relics from the Stone Age, the Babylonian, Assyrian, and Islamic periods were stolen or destroyed by looters after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled by US-led troops in 2003.

The Mosul Museum and the ancient cities of Hatra and Nimrud were destroyed and large numbers of antiquities were smuggled after the Islamic State militants took control of large territories in northern and western Iraq in 2014.