BAGHDAD: Do you want to buy a more than 5,000-year-old Sumerian tablet, listed as the property of a gentleman from Sussex in England and passed down as a family heirloom?
On auction site liveauctioneers.com, bidding for the Sumerian clay tablet starts at 550 pounds ($750).
The item weighs just 70 grams (2.5 ounces) but bears traces of cuneiform writing -- the oldest recorded in the world -- and is listed as "Property of a West Sussex, UK, gentleman".
This example comes with letters of provenance by experts.
But the ownership history of some such objects can be harder to prove.
They may not have been handed down but handed on, via smugglers and middlemen.
The boom in looted objects from antiquity is a real problem in Iraq, where corruption is prevalent and archaeological sites are poorly protected.
For some objects, it can be hard to prove that it was not in fact stolen from lands where the Sumerian empire stood in the fourth millennium BC.
Chris Wren, from the British firm TimeLine Auctions, parent company of liveauctioneers.com, says they are aware "of the potential for looted, smuggled or other stolen materials" to come onto the market.
"We spend a great deal of effort and money in seeking to weed such possibilities out," he said.
Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians all trod on the ancient land that is now Iraq, and that makes it a land of choice for smugglers.
It teems with archaeological sites where traffickers engage in "random exhumations", said Laith Majid Hussein, director of the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage.
"We don't have statistics on the number of antiquities that end up as contraband," Majid said.
Corruption and the prevalence of armed groups have encouraged the growth of this lucrative business.
In one site in southern Iraq, where the Sumerian and Babylonian civilisations once flourished, a security guard described the challenges he faced.
"One day, I saw a truck arrive with three armed men," the guard said, who asked not to be named to protect both himself and the location of the site.
"They started digging, and when I intervened they started shooting in the air and shouting at me -- 'You think you own this place?'"
The lack of resources to protect Iraq's ancient sites is dire.
In a country where an estimated 27 percent of the 40 million citizens live below the poverty line, the authorities say they have other priorities.
Iraq's ancient sites are concentrated in the south, around Kut, Samawa and Nasiriyah.
From there, smugglers transport their booty to the southern marshes, and to Amara, a city not far from Iran, which has become a "hub for antiquities trafficking", according to one archaeologist who asked to remain anonymous.
The stolen antiquities are then taken into Iran "to cross the sea in fishing boats to the Gulf countries", he said.
Alternatively, they may be smuggled overland across Iraq's western desert, which borders Jordan, Syria and Turkey.
An Iraqi government source said that the money earned from trafficking feeds criminal networks, in a country where armed groups, some close to Iran, have grown in power.
Corruption also plays a role in a state where government officials are poorly paid.
Graft watchdog Transparency International ranks Iraq as 160th out of 180 countries listed for corruption.
When the Islamic State group (IS) occupied large swathes of Iraqi territory between 2014 and 2017, the jihadists used bulldozers, pickaxes and explosives to ransack dozens of pre-Islamic sites and their treasures.
Nimrud, a jewel of the Assyrian empire founded in the 13th Century BC and located outside Mosul in the north of the country, was one such target.
The jihadists "also engaged in smuggling", said one European security expert, speaking on condition of anonymity. "That earned them money -- but it affected Syria more."
The group did well from the trade in illegal antiquities, according to a 2020 report published by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, a Geneva-based organisation.
It said that in 2015, "of IS's annual income, deemed to be between US $2.35 billion and $2.68 billion, antiquities trafficking and (in-state) taxation accounted for US $20 million".
Earlier this month, the United States returned to Iraq about 17,000 archaeological treasures dating back 4,000 years that had been looted in recent decades.
Despite welcoming such moves, the Iraqi government source said he believes the problem "lies in neighbouring states" that are complicit in the smuggling.
"The Iraqi state is weak," he said. "Archaeological artefacts are not a priority."
Graft and security issues feed the trade in Iraq's past
https://arab.news/me2wn
Graft and security issues feed the trade in Iraq's past
- For some objects, it can be hard to prove that they were not in fact stolen
St. Francis relics go on public show for first time in Italy
Assisi, Italy: Saint Francis of Assisi’s skeleton is going on public display from Sunday for the first time for the 800th anniversary of his death, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors.
Inside a nitrogen-filled plexiglass case with the Latin inscription “Corpus Sancti Francisci” (The Body of St. Francis), the remains are being shown in the Italian hill town’s Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi.
St. Francis, who died on October 3, 1226, founded the Franciscan order after renouncing his wealth and devoting his life to the poor.
Giulio Cesareo, director of communications for the Franciscan convent in Assisi said he hoped the display could be “a meaningful experience” for believers and non-believers alike.
Cesareo, a Franciscan friar, said the “damaged” and “consumed” state of the bones showed that St. Francis “gave himself completely” to his life’s work.
His remains, which will be on display until March 22, were transferred to the basilica built in the saint’s honor in 1230.
But it was only in 1818, after excavations carried out in utmost secrecy, that his tomb was rediscovered.
Apart from previous exhumations for inspection and scientific examination, the bones of Saint Francis have only been displayed once, in 1978, to a very limited public and for just one day.
Usually hidden from view, the transparent case containing the relics since 1978 was brought out on Saturday from the metal coffer in which it is kept, inside his stone tomb in the crypt of the basilica.
The case is itself inside another bullet-proof and anti-burglary glass case.
Surveillance cameras will operate 24 hours a day for added protection of the remains.
St. Francis is Italy’s patron saint and the 800th anniversary commemorations of his death will also see the restoration of an October 4 public holiday in his honor.
The holiday had been scrapped nearly 50 years ago for budget reasons.
Its revival is also a tribute to late pope Francis who took on the saint’s name.
Pope Francis died last year at the age of 88.
‘Not a movie set’
Reservations to see the saint’s remains already amount to “almost 400,000 (people) coming from all parts of the world, with of course a clear predominance from Italy,” said Marco Moroni, guardian of the Franciscan convent.
“But we also have Brazilians, North Americans, Africans,” he added.
During this rather quiet time of year, the basilica usually sees 1,000 visitors per day on weekdays, rising to 4,000 on weekends.
The Franciscans said they were expecting 15,000 visitors per day on weekdays and up to 19,000 on Saturdays and Sundays for the month-long display of the remains.
“From the very beginning, since the time of the catacombs, Christians have venerated the bones of martyrs, the relics of martyrs, and they have never really experienced it as something macabre,” Cesareo said.
What “Christians still venerate today, in 2026, in the relics of a saint is the presence of the Holy Spirit,” he said.
Another church in Assisi holds the remains of Carlo Acutis, an Italian teenager who died in 2006 and who was canonized in September by Pope Leo XIV.
Experts said the extended display of St. Francis’s remains should not affect their state of preservation.
“The display case is sealed, so there is no contact with the outside air. In reality, it remains in the same conditions as when it was in the tomb,” Cesareo said.
The light, which will remain subdued in the church, should also not have an effect.
“The basilica will not be lit up like a stadium,” Cesareo said. “This is not a movie set.”
