Nazi Victim’s Family Told to Return Artifact

[Assyriologisticks]

15. Why this tablet should be returned.

Hi all! I'm an Assyriologist in training and just saw this and thought I'd put my two cents in. This tablet was excavated in 1913 by the German Oriental Society with official permission from the Ottoman Empire at the time from the site of Kar Tukulti Ninurta, just north of the ancient Assyrian capital, Ashshur (pronounced ahsh-shur). Tukulti Ninurta was a king right at the end of the Bronze Age who defeated the formerly great Hittite empire and was subsequently killed by his sons in a coup plot. This tablet was a dedication inscription to the high god Ashshur, whose cult Tukulti Ninurta transferred from the ancient capital to his new city. So it is historically a very important text.

Going back to the agreement, foreign excavators had the right to take back a certain amount of the find as "partage" with the rest going to the Archaeology Museum that's now in modern day Istanbul. As WWI broke out, this tablet didn't make it's way to the Vorderasiatisches Museum until 1926; at which time the Ottoman Empire no longer existed, but the Mandate government recognized the legally binding agreement from 1913. This is the norm in international antiquity's law; to recognize any legal agreements made at the time of excavation of the artifact as legally standing. So, since the Turkish government is the successor to the Ottoman government, if it were to be returned, it would go to Istanbul.

However, the Ushak scandal created a lot of mistrust towards Turkish museum practices. This scandal was where the Turkish Government sued the New York Met to return the treasure of the Lydian king Croesus, who was famously wealthy. The Met lost and the treasure was returned to Turkey; however, sometime in the 2000's, the director of the museum replaced some of these priceless artifacts with fakes and sold the real ones on the blackmarket. The scandal broke in 2006 and since that time courts and museums have often refused to loan or return items to Turkey.

Now, as for this item going to Iraq; that would be even more problematic. Iraq is still a very unstable country, and recall as I said, that this tablet was legally excavated and exported. There was no theft here; although it may seem that way from a certain jaundiced perspective, legal contracts are legal contracts.

Mention was made of returning it to the people to whom it belonged. Interestingly enough, this would not be the people of Iraq as a whole, but the modern Assyrians. They still exist as a minority in Northern Iraq/de facto Kurdistan now; however, since the war *cough thanks a lot Bush cough* they and other Christian minorities in the country have been severely persecuted even though Kurdistan has been relatively more peaceful for Christians than Baghdad or elsewhere in Iraq, and when the Iraq Museum in Baghdad was looted, the looters almost wholly focused on the pre-Islamic antiquities. So there is no guarantee if it is returned to Iraq or the Kurdish regional government, it would be protected. Interestingly enough, there is a large Assyrian diaspora population in Michigan and California.

So, now to the specific situation as to how it got into Flamenbaum's possession. Legally, I understand that the courts of New York first found the Vorderasiatisches Museum's claim to it had lapsed due to the law of laches, in that they hadn't published post-WWII that it had been stolen. I think we can all agree that the situation in Berlin post-WWII, with the city occupied by Russia then split between the allies was sheer chaos at best. Some may be swayed by the fact that Mr. Flamenbaum was a Holocaust survivor; however, in the original ruling and in this one, that was not found to be relevant legally in any sense; and in my own way, I have to agree with that. I think the media shouldn't have put the issue of him being a Holocaust survivor in the headline, as that was not what the Museum was disputing. The dispute was that this tablet was looted from Berlin sometime in 1945-6 and thus rightfully belongs to the Museum under their agreement of partage, see above. Mr. Flamenbaum or his descendants aren't being accused of theft but merely possessing property that under current international antiquities law, the 1970 UNESCO Convention, belongs to the museum. The relevant wording is "property stolen from a museum or a religious or secular public monument or similar institutions provided that such property is documented as appertaining to the inventory of that institution," should be repatriated and that is definitely the case here.

These are just my thoughts and some of the background information on this story that I think is relevant to understanding this specific case.