The DOJ seeks to forfeit the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, a cuneiform tablet purchased by the Hobby Lobby for the Museum of the Bible. DOJ says tablet "originated in the area of modern-day Iraq and entered the United States contrary to federal law."

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/united-states-files-civil-action-forfeit-rare-cuneiform-tablet-bearing-portion-epic

According to the complaint: In 2001, a US antiquities dealer went to London to see the tablet, which was being offered by Jordanian antiquities dealer Ghassan Rihani. Tablet "was not readable due to encrustations on the surface."

Rihani died in 2001. In 2003, US dealer (unnamed in complaint) returned and bought the tablet and other objects from Rihani's relatives for $50,350, then shipped them to the US.

An unnamed "Cuneiform Expert" preserved the tablet by baking and cleaning it and removing encrusted material, then identified it as part of the Gilgamesh epic.

In March 2005, the "Cuneiform Expert" shipped the tablet to Princeton, New Jersey where it was studied by "The Professor" for several weeks. (Hello @Princeton !)

In February 2007, the "Antiquities Dealer" agreed to sell the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet to two antiquities buyers for $50,000...with no provenance. A month later, the buyer belated asked about the provenance.

So, the dealer invented one. "The False Provenance Letter indicated that the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet was purchased at a 1981 Butterfield & Butterfield auction in San Francisco as part of lot 1503...[which] consisted of “miscellaneous objects including several other antiquities.”

With that, the buyer published the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet in a catalog, stating that the provenance was “clean” as the piece had been with a single U.S. owner for the past 25 years.

Tada: Good provenance!

In 2007, The Professor’s translation and study of the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet was published in Revue d’Assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale, a French journal in the field of cuneiform epigraphy.

Tada: Authentication, publication history and academic endorsement!

Enter the auction house: In December 2013, a new owner of the Tablet contacted the London office of a "major international auction house" seeking to consign the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet to the Auction House for a private sale...

Auction: Can you verify provenance?
Dealer: Nope, it "would not hold up to scrutiny in a public auction."
Auction: Ok. Private sale then.

DOJ: "No further inquiries were made about the provenance during this call."

Enter @museumofBible: In March 2014, the Auction House offered the tablet to a representative of the Green Collection/Museum of the Bible.

In July, Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. agreed to pay the Auction House $1,674,000 for the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet

The tax dodge! In "July 2014, the Auction House shipped the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet to their New York office. It was later hand-carried to Hobby Lobby in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma so that Hobby Lobby could avoid incurring a New York sales tax"

After purchase, @museumofBible notes Auction House did not include “the date or country of origin” on the invoice, asks them to fix.

Auction house adds Iraq as country of origin and cites false provenance as establishing it was "safely out of Iraq before 1981":

On July 30, 2014, Hobby Lobby wired $1,674,000 to the Auction House as payment for the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet.

But...Hobby Lobby never got a copy of that false provenance from the Auction House. So...

Three years later, on October 23, 2017, a curator at the MOTB conducting due diligence research contacted the Antiquities Dealer, Auction House and The Professor asking for a copy of the provenance.

Auction house looks into it and wonders why its former head of antiquities didn't disclose the full (false) provenance:

Dealer dodges questions from Auction House.

Auction House dodges Museum of the Bible.

Then MOB discovers false provenance:

On September 24, 2019, the tablet was seized from the Museum of the Bible by Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”), which transferred it to Customs Border Protection for storage in a government warehouse in Queens, New York.

Here is the Museum of the Bible display for the Gilgamesh tablet, which was already gone when I visited in November 2019.

@MichaelDPress Michael Press has ID'd "The Professor" as Andrew George:

https://twitter.com/MichaelDPress/status/1262477211199770624

George's credentials are...considerable: https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff30983.php

and Press suggests the Auction House in the complaint was Christie's https://twitter.com/MichaelDPress/status/1262478349965893634

Question: Did the Greens or Hobby Lobby take a tax write off for donating looted antiquities to @museumofBible ? https://twitter.com/mountainsstars/status/1262467682672107526