Iraq returns artifacts borrowed by America about 500 years ago

Washington-INA-Zeina Ibrahim -

Between the year of 1922 and 1934 , archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania discovered thousands of broken clay tablets in the ancient city of Ur near Nasiriyah.

 The plates which are more than four thousand years old, were loaned by the Iraqi government, then, temporarily to the university, for the purpose of restoration and reading their contents, and today, nearly a hundred years after the Iraqi embassy in Washington received three hundred pieces, and that about three thousand more pieces soon.

These artifacts according to specialists, are business transaction receipts, similar to modern credit cards and reflect part of the bureaucratic system of the Third Dynasty of Ur.

Experts say that these arrivals were no longer needed after years of use, and the Sumerian owners decided to use them as pillars to build a temple, so most of these fragile clay tablets have been broken and fragmented.