Iran says US must return all ancient Achaemenid tablets
The United States must return the Iran’s ancient Achaemenid clay tablets without any exceptions and excuses, Tehran’s UN envoy has said.
Iran’s ambassador and permanent
representative to the United Nations Majid Takht-Ravanchi
says United States has repeatedly resorted to excuses to put off repatriating
the rare tablets to Iran.
“About 90
years ago, the Achaemenid tablets were transferred to the Oriental Institute of
the University of Chicago on a three-year loan,” IRNA quoted
Takht-Ravanchi as saying.
“Unfortunately, they have not
been fully returned since then,” he added.
Several batches of Achaemenid-era
clay tablets and related fragments have been delivered to Iran in recent years,
but thousands of parts are still held in the Oriental Institute of the
University of Chicago.
Takht-Ravanchi asserted Iran’s
demand is “clear,” reiterating that all of the loaned tablets must be delivered
to the Iranian government intact.
He said the tablets are part of
Iran’s culture and history and belong to the people of Iran.
“The United States postpones the
return every time under a pretext, while the Americans themselves acknowledge
that these tablets came to the United States on loan but were not fully
returned,” the Iranian envoy added.
The tablets were discovered by
archaeologists affiliated with the University of Chicago in the 1930s while excavating
in Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire.
In 2019, almost 1,800 artifacts,
from a collection of tablets that would come to be known as the Persepolis
Fortification Archive, were returned to Iran.
The collection gave a detailed look
at aspects of Achaemenid society, provided insight into the Persian Empire
centered in what is now Iran, and influenced how scholars view Achaemenid art,
language, and history.
The Achaemenid Empire was the
largest of the empires of the ancient Near East and extended from the Balkans
and Egypt to India and Central Asia.
According to the Oriental
Institute, the tablets illustrated the “support of the king and court,
deployment of workers, practice of religion, the development of seal art, the
interplay of languages, and more.”
In 2006, a US federal court ruling sought to seize and auction the invaluable collection of ancient clay tablets. However, an appeals court later overturned the ruling, and in 2018, the US Supreme Court affirmed the subsequent ruling that the collection cannot be taken away.
