TEHRAN - Iran’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts has formed a working group to pursue the long-awaited return of looted artifacts, including the remnants of Achaemenid clay tablets that are on loan from Iran to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago since 1935.

“We have formed a special working group in the ministry of cultural heritage for the repatriation of historical objects,” deputy tourism minister Ali Darabi said on Wednesday.

“They are helping us seriously to win four repatriation cases [currently underway in international courts],” the official added.

Talking about the Achaemenid clay tablets, the official said a significant part of the case had resolved… “The verdict is in favor of Iran. However, this issue is tied to Iran-U.S. relations.”

Over the past couple of years, Iran has put in a great deal of effort to recover its cultural heritage. For instance, in May 2019, Iran’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts called for the return of relics, which were discovered in a safety-deposit box of a bank in Austria months earlier.

Last year, a total of 28 Iranian relics, which had been smuggled abroad decades ago, were finally returned home from Vienna. Among the repatriated relics were examples of bronze objects known as Lorestan’s pins, similar examples of which are being kept at the museums of Reza Abbasi and the National Museum of Iran.

In September 2019, a batch of clay tablets, which comprised 1,783 pieces, were returned home after 84 years. They are part of thousands of clay tablets and related fragments, which were kept at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History and the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. In February 2018, following years of ups and downs, the fate of those ancient Persian artifacts was left in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Iran.

Archaeologists affiliated with the University of Chicago discovered the tablets in the 1930s while excavating in Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire. However, the institute has resumed work in collaboration with colleagues in Iran, and the return of the tablets is part of a broadening of contacts between scholars in the two countries, said Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago.

The tablets reveal the scenes of the economic, social, and religious history of the Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BC) and the larger Near Eastern region in the fifth century BC.

AFM