Iraqi Artifacts Are Found in Storeroom

Ali Al-Saadi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

There is a lesson to be learned here: next time you're missing 600 ancient artifacts, look into your Prime Ministers closet first.

NYTimes.com: "More than 600 ancient artifacts looted and smuggled out of Iraq, found and returned by the United States, and then lost again for nearly two years were rediscovered in a storeroom of the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on Sunday, an Iraqi official said.

The artifacts — including bronze figurines, glass and clay vessels, and beaded necklaces from the world’s earliest civilizations — had disappeared into a bureaucratic fog after an American military aircraft returned them in 2008.

Their disappearance came to light on Sept. 6 when Iraq celebrated the return of another batch of relics looted from the country, prompting an embarrassing and frantic search to find them.

A spokesman for the State Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Abdulzahra al-Talqani, said the items would be turned over to Iraq’s National Museum on Monday. “Nobody knew about them in the storeroom,” he said."