TEHRAN – Over 11,000 flawless [Achaemenid-era] clay tablets and a large number of fragments of their kind will be back home, Iran tourism chief said on Wednesday.

“Of the cited number, 1784 clay tablets have been endorsed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in order to be shipped to Iran, in the first stage,” Ali-Asghar Mounesan said, CHTN reported.

“They are currently being packed by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago,” the official added.

Back in February and following years of ups and downs, the fate of some ancient Persian artifacts, on loan from Iran to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago since the 1930s, was left in the hands of a U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Iran.

Archaeologists affiliated with the University of Chicago discovered the tablets in 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 economic, social and religious history of the Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BC) and the larger Near Eastern region in the fifth century BC.

The Persian Empire was the largest and most durable empire of its time. The empire stretched from Ethiopia, through Egypt, to Greece, to Anatolia (modern Turkey), Central Asia and to India.

AFM/MQ/MG