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Big-box arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby will surrender some 5,500 artifacts it purchased illegally and pay $3 million after federal prosecutors filed a civil complaint in New York yesterday, reports Dan Whitcomb at Reuters.
The objects are believed to come from Iraq, where they were smuggled into other Middle Eastern countries. In 2010, they were sent to the United States falsely labeled as clay tiles.
[...] The items include 144 cylinder seals, used to roll decorative images onto clay, as well as clay bullae, which were used to create wax tokens to authenticate documents. The majority of the items are cuneiform tablets. Cuneiform is a type of writing developed about 6,000 years ago in what is now southern Iraq, Smithsonian.com's Anne Trubek reports. Over time, the writing, which looks like a series of lines and triangles impressed into palm-size pieces of wet clay, was used for over a dozen ancient languages, much like the Roman alphabet for most European and Romance languages.
So, why was a craft chain buying ancient Iraqi artifacts in the first place? Whitcomb reports that company president Steve Green is the founder of the Museum of the Bible, now under construction in Washington, D.C. He began acquiring artifacts for the museum, including the forfeited items, in 2009.
Also at NYT. DoJ and Hobby Lobby statements.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 08 2017, @12:43AM
How about when you wrote [soylentnews.org]:
In other words, you don't have a leg to stand on (maybe someone ate it?) in this argument. I doubt you'd advocate the reallocation of your personal protein in some future year just because you happen to fall above the inevitably falling "edible" threshold of personal finances. It's some other person's protein that needs to be redistributed for the common good.
Funny how often people who have "this completely overwhelming feeling" seem to be deeply hypocritical on the very things that they can't think about.