Stolen Iraqi Artefacts Returned

Dozens of stolen Iraqi cultural artefacts have been returned. 

More than 60 Iraqi treasures, illegally smuggled into the USA, have been returned to the Republic of Iraq this week. The artefacts, including gold-plated items from the palace of Saddam Hussein and a limestone head of the Assyrian king Sargon II, are vitally important pieces of Iraq’s history. 

Experts believe that the head was removed from one of the lamassu – an Assyrian protective deity, often depicted with a bull or lion’s body, eagle’s wings and a human head – at Sargon II’s palace in Khorsabad, the 2,700-year-old Assyrian capital in northern Iraq.