Ancient Assyrian Golden Treasure found after being lost in WWII
By Dana Chivvis
New York - 20-04-2010
A recent New York state court case has brought to light the remarkable journey of an ancient gold tablet from the sands of today's Iraq to a safe-deposit box in Long Island. The 3,200-year-old artifact, which fits easily into the palm of a hand, disappeared from the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin during World War II and reappeared among the possessions of a Brooklyn liquor store owner several years later. Originally, the tablet was made to tell the story of the construction of an Assyrian temple in Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq.
On March 30, Judge John B. Riordan of the Surrogate's Court of the state of New York ruled that the artifact -- which is worth an estimated $10 million -- will remain in the possession of the Flamenbaum family. It marked the end of a case that began in 2006, when Vorderasiatisches Museum officials claimed the tablet was rightfully theirs, though it was listed in the estate of Riven Flamenbaum, who left it to his children when he died in 2003. The tablet had been a part of the museum's collection before World War II. As the war approached, the museum packed up its artifacts and put them in storage. When inventory was taken in 1945, the tablet was no longer there.
Riven Flamenbaum was a Polish Jew who was sent to Nazi slave-labor camps and eventually was transferred to Auschwitz. When he was freed at the end of the war, he went to the American-run Pocking-Waldstadt Displaced Persons Camp in Germany. There he met and married his wife Dora, another Auschwitz survivor; around the same time, he bartered for the tablet, which he brought with him to New York in 1949. He worked as a delivery boy at a Brooklyn liquor store, which he eventually bought and ran until he retired, and then there was the gold tablet, which Riven would show his children.
The tale of the tablet itself stretches back centuries before it reached Riven Flamenbaum's hands. It was created in the late 13th century B.C. in Assyria's capital, Ashur, which lies halfway between Mosul and Baghdad and is now called Qalaat Sherqat. The tablet describes the history and construction of the Ishtar Temple, built for a goddess, and originally was set into the temple's foundation as a sort of time capsule for a future king, according to Eckart Frahm, professor of Assyriology at Yale University. "These were made for special occasions," Frahm said. "These were made to commemorate the temple."
The tablet was excavated in 1913 by a German archaeologist and sent to the Iraqi port city of Basra, where it was put on a ship to Germany. The outbreak of World War I diverted the ship to Portugal instead, where it remained until 1926. The tablet finally went on display in Germany in 1934 -- but only for five years, before the next war sent it back into storage. In making his ruling, Judge Riordan said that because the Vorderasiatisches Museum didn't report the tablet as stolen or take any steps to recover it until 2006, the artifact should remain part of the Flamenbaum estate. The museum can decide to appeal, but for the time being, the ancient gold artifact will stay at its most recent home, in New York.
ANA ASHUR Note: The Assyrians owners of all this vast wealth are the only ones who do not get to enjoy holding their ancestors' heritage in their hands while seemingly every one else even those who are not even remotely linked to Assyria are able to do as they please with the Assyrian heritage while we as Assyrians can not even hold one piece of our heritage in our hands and we have to go to Museums and pay in order to see the wealth which we own just like strangers. It seems we are condemned to watch our wealth and heritage both in what is today's Iraq and around the world in the hands of strangers while we the true owners are treated as if we are guests in our own homeland and refugees who are not even recognized as being stripped off their rights and lands abroad ... They say justice is blind but in reality those who are supposed to serve justice are the blind ones and purposely.
