TEHRAN – A collection of ancient Persian seals, which had been smuggled to the U.S. in 2002 and returned to Iran recently, will go on display at the National Museum of Iran.

TEHRAN – A collection of ancient Persian seals, which had been smuggled to the U.S. in 2002 and returned to Iran recently, will go on display at the National Museum of Iran.

“The museum will display the seals from May 14 to 20,” museum director Jebrael Nokandeh announced.

The artifacts date back to the Sassanid period (224 to 651 AD).

The U.S. government returned the 73-item invaluable antique shipment to Permanent Mission of Iran to the United Nations in New York last week and then the items were transferred to the country.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs delivered the seals to the National Museum of Iran on Sunday.

These highly valuable pieces of antiquity are the fourth historic shipments that have been returned to the country over the past few years.

Last year, Italy returned to Iran some 30 stolen artifacts that had been smuggled to the European country during the past 10 years.

The ancient Iranian artifacts comprised of items belonging to Iran’s pre- and post-Islamic era, had been recovered by the Italian art police and were handed over to a representative from the Iranian Embassy in Italy.

Iran’s ancient fossils, which had been sent to the U.S. some 40 years ago for studies were returned home after Tehran won a decades-long legal dispute with Washington, were unveiled in the Iranian capital.

Before that, in December 2014, a collection of over 300 artifacts of around 3000 years old which had been kept in Belgium for 50 years, was finally returned to Iran following a verdict by the court of appeals in Belgium.

And the last but not the least, the U.S. returned a 2700-year-old Persian griffin, a so-called mythical creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle, during President Hassan Rouhani’s visit to New York in October 2103 to attend the 68th Session of the United Nations General Assembly.