# The Gilgamesh Dream Tablet > Unknown Babylonian scribe - c. 1600 BC > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unknown-babylonian-scribe/gilgamesh-dream-tablet/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-02 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown Babylonian scribe - **Date:** c. 1600 BC - **Medium:** Clay, incised in cuneiform script in the Akkadian language - **Dimensions:** Approximately 6 x 5 in (15 x 13 cm) - **Object type:** Antiquity - **Period:** Mesopotamian, Middle Babylonian - **Current location:** Iraq Museum, Baghdad - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary A fragment of a clay tablet about six inches by five, written in Akkadian, carrying the passage of the Gilgamesh epic in which the hero tells his mother his dreams and she reads them as the promise of a friend: you will see him and your heart will laugh. In this copy the names of Gilgamesh and Enkidu are replaced by those of the gods Sin and Ea, which is why it matters to Assyriologists as well as to lawyers.It surfaced in a London apartment about 2001 among unconserved and dirt-encrusted material belonging to the Jordanian dealer Ghassan Rihani. An American antiquities dealer bought a group of tablets from Rihani's family in the spring of 2003 for 50,350 dollars and shipped them to the United States without declaring formal entry. Cleaned and read, this one turned out to be Gilgamesh. In 2007 the dealer sold it for 50,000 dollars and, when the buyers asked for a provenance, wrote one: the tablet, he said, had been in Lot 1503 of a 1981 Butterfield and Butterfield sale in San Francisco, a box of miscellaneous ancient bronze fragments. That letter travelled with the object for seven years.Christie's sold it to Hobby Lobby in a private sale in July 2014 for 1,674,000 dollars, for the Museum of the Bible. The government alleged that the auction house had been told by the dealer himself that the provenance would not withstand scrutiny and should not be used for a public sale, and that it withheld both the letter and the dealer's name from the buyer. Agents seized the tablet in September 2019. On 18 May 2020 two actions were filed in the Eastern District of New York on the same day: the United States sued the tablet itself under the customs forfeiture statute, and Hobby Lobby sued Christie's for fraud. Hobby Lobby consented to forfeiture in July 2021, and the ground was importation, not title. The tablet went to Baghdad, and the question of where in Iraq it came from has never been decided by anybody. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1600 BC** Written in southern Mesopotamia; scribe, library and owner unknown `[unknown]` (origin) The attribution to the First Sealand Dynasty, about the early sixteenth century BC, comes from Hobby Lobby's own complaint against the auction house and is an argument advanced by a party to litigation, not an excavation record. No findspot, no archive context and no colophon are published. - **-c. 2001** In Iraq; circumstances of removal never adjudicated `[unknown]` (gap) Iraqi officials and much press coverage state that the tablet was looted from an Iraqi museum during the 1991 Gulf War. That assertion has never been tested in any court. The United States forfeiture case did not rest on proving a particular theft; the government's position was that hundreds of thousands of objects have been looted from Iraqi sites since the early 1990s and that cuneiform tablets are among the most commonly trafficked, and its legal ground was the manner of importation. The distinction is the whole point of this record. - **c. 2001-spring 2003** Ghassan Rihani, Jordanian antiquities dealer, London; then his family `[documented]` (first documented appearance) The tablet was seen, still encrusted and unconserved, at Rihani's London apartment about 2001 by an American antiquities dealer. Rihani is reported to have died later that year. In the spring of 2003 the dealer and a cuneiform expert met members of the Rihani family at the apartment and inspected a group of tablets. - **spring 2003-2007** An American antiquities dealer, unnamed in the government's filings `[documented]` (purchase and importation) The dealer bought the group from the Rihani family for 50,350 dollars. He and the cuneiform expert shipped the tablets to the United States without declaring formal entry. After cleaning, cuneiform scholars recognised the Gilgamesh passage. About 2005 the tablet was sent to Princeton, where a scholar studied it for several weeks. - **2007-December 2013** Two antiquities dealers, then further owners `[documented]` (sale with a fabricated provenance) Sold for 50,000 dollars with a translation. The dealer supplied no provenance at first; asked for one, he produced what the pleadings call the False Provenance Letter, claiming the tablet had been deaccessioned by an unidentified small museum and sold in Lot 1503 of a 1981 Butterfield and Butterfield auction in San Francisco described as a box of miscellaneous ancient bronze fragments. One buyer catalogued the tablet as having a clean provenance and a single American owner for twenty-five years; it appeared in an October 2007 catalogue of Michael Sharpe Rare and Antiquated Books offering a translation, an authentication and a clear provenance. - **December 2013-July 2014** Consigned to Christie's, London, for private sale `[documented]` (consignment) A later owner approached the auction house's London office to consign the tablet for a private rather than a public sale. A representative of the Museum of the Bible viewed it in London in March 2014. The government alleged that the auction house's antiquities director spoke to the original dealer, who said the provenance would not withstand scrutiny and should not be used in connection with a public sale. - **July 2014-September 2019** Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., Oklahoma City; on loan to the Museum of the Bible, Washington `[documented]` (private treaty purchase) Bought for 1,674,000 dollars. The auction house shipped the tablet to its New York office and hand-delivered it to Oklahoma City; an employee carried it on a flight from London. On 22 July 2014 the museum's registrar emailed the auction house to point out that the invoice gave neither a date for the tablet nor a country of origin, and asked for the auction listing. Correspondence about the provenance continued until at least October 2017. - **September 2019-July 2021** Seized by federal agents under a judicially authorised warrant; held at a Customs and Border Protection facility in Queens, New York `[documented]` (seizure) The tablet was taken from the Museum of the Bible. On 18 May 2020 the United States filed an in rem civil forfeiture complaint under 19 U.S.C. 1595a(c)(1)(A) in the Eastern District of New York, case 1:20-cv-02222, before Judge Ann Marie Donnelly. Hobby Lobby filed a Claim of Interest in June 2020 seeking the tablet's return to itself. - **July 2021-23 September 2021** The United States of America `[documented]` (forfeiture) Hobby Lobby consented to forfeiture, which was entered on the ground of the tablet's illegal importation into the United States in 2014. The docket records the case as terminated on 26 July 2021; the forfeiture was reported on 27 July. - **23 September 2021-present** Republic of Iraq; Iraq Museum, Baghdad `[documented]` (repatriation) A ceremonial certificate transferring ownership was signed at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington by Steve K. Francis of Homeland Security Investigations and Fareed Yasseen, Iraq's ambassador to the United States. The tablet went on display in Baghdad on 7 December 2021, one of 17,926 objects Iraq reported recovering from the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan and the Netherlands in a single year. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - This tablet has never been sold at public auction and has no hammer price. The 1,674,000 dollars Hobby Lobby paid in July 2014 was a PRIVATE TREATY sale through Christie's London: a negotiated figure, no underbidder, no published premium, no catalogue. That is not incidental to the case. The government alleged that the parties chose a private sale precisely because the provenance would not survive the scrutiny a public offering attracts, and the dealer who wrote the false letter is said to have told the auction house so. The other two prices on record are dealer prices: 50,350 dollars paid to the Rihani family in 2003 for a group of tablets including this one, and 50,000 dollars in 2007. The only auction in the story, Butterfield and Butterfield's 1981 sale of Lot 1503 in San Francisco, was real, and this tablet was not in it. ## Open questions - Where in Iraq did the tablet come from? The 1991 museum-looting account is asserted by Iraqi officials and repeated in the press but was never adjudicated, and the forfeiture rested on importation rather than on any finding about a site or an institution. - Who is the Antiquities Dealer? The government's filings identify by role, not by name, the American dealer who bought the tablet in 2003 and wrote the false provenance letter in 2007. No prosecution of that individual has been located. - What happened to Hobby Lobby's suit against Christie's? The auction house moved to compel arbitration under the sale contract; that motion was denied and the suit (1:20-cv-02239, E.D.N.Y.) was pending at the last account located, dated January 2021. A 2026-09-02 check of docket-aggregator search results shows the case marked terminated 5 January 2022, but CourtListener's own docket page returned a bot-verification wall on direct fetch and no settlement, dismissal order or news account of the outcome has been located by this record, so what the termination actually resolved (settlement, voluntary dismissal, judgment) remains unconfirmed. - What became of the other tablets bought from the Rihani family in 2003 for 50,350 dollars? The group is described in the pleadings but not itemised, and no account of the rest of it has been located. - Was any duty, penalty or criminal charge pursued over the undeclared 2003 importation? The forfeiture was grounded on the 2014 importation. Nothing consulted says what became of the earlier one. - Has the tablet been published scholarly since its return? No edition, photograph series or study of the text after 2021 has been located, and the object was in litigation or in custody for most of the period in which it was known to exist. - Where exactly was the tablet between about 1991 and 2001? Nothing in any source consulted fills that decade. - Is the tablet on display in Baghdad in 2026? The Iraq Museum was reported to be undergoing renovation in mid-2026 and the last confirmed display date is 7 December 2021. ## Sources - [1] United States Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, press release 21-922, 'United States Returns to Iraq Rare Tablet Bearing Portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh', 23 September 2021. Primary source for the 2003 purchase from a family member of a London coin dealer, the undeclared entry, the text and the substituted names of Sin and Ea, the dimensions, the 2007 false provenance letter, the 2014 private sale and hand-carried importation, and the statement that Hobby Lobby consented to forfeiture on the ground of the illegal importation of 2014. Consulted in the Internet Archive capture of 26 December 2022. - [2] U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations, press release, 'Civil action filed to forfeit rare cuneiform tablet from Hobby Lobby', 18 May 2020. Source for the September 2019 seizure, the statements of Peter C. Fitzhugh and United States Attorney Richard P. Donoghue, and the allegation that the auction house was told the provenance would not withstand scrutiny and withheld the letter and the dealer's name. Consulted in the Internet Archive capture of 31 December 2021 because ice.gov returns 403 to direct requests. - [3] Nicholas M. O'Donnell and colleagues, 'Problems of Provenance: The Gilgamesh Dream Tablet', Greenberg Traurig LLP, published by the National Law Review, 19 January 2021. Detailed reading of both complaints: the statutory basis under 19 U.S.C. 1595a(c)(1)(A), Ghassan Rihani, the 50,350 dollar purchase, the Princeton study, the 50,000 dollar sale, Lot 1503 of the 1981 Butterfield and Butterfield auction, the Michael Sharpe catalogue, the December 2013 consignment, the 1,674,000 dollar purchase price, the registrar's email of 22 July 2014, Hobby Lobby's Claim of Interest and the arbitration motion. - [4] CNBC, 'Hobby Lobby's $1.6 million Gilgamesh tablet has been forfeited to the U.S.', 27 July 2021. Source for the date of the forfeiture announcement and for the statement that the tablet was illegally transported to the United States in 2003 and 2014. - [5] BBC News, 'Gilgamesh Dream Tablet: Iraq puts looted artefact on display', 7 December 2021. Source for the Baghdad display, the figure of 17,926 objects recovered in a year, the statement of Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein and the widely repeated claim of a 1991 museum theft. - [6] CourtListener docket, United States v. One Cuniform Tablet Known as the 'Gilgamesh Dream Tablet', 1:20-cv-02222 (E.D.N.Y.). Source for the filing date of 18 May 2020, the assignment to Judge Ann Marie Donnelly and Magistrate Judge Peggy Kuo, and the termination date of 26 July 2021. - [7] NPR, 'An Ancient Tablet, Stolen Then Acquired By Hobby Lobby, Will Be Returned To Iraq', 21 September 2021. Source for the identification of the auction house as Christie's, for Christie's statement that it did not know the documents were false at the time, for the 2017 three million dollar settlement and for the March 2020 announcement of 11,500 objects to be returned. Note that this report describes the inscription as Sumerian; the government's filings say Akkadian, and this record follows the government. - [8] Cultural Property Disputes Resource, Claremont Graduate University, 'Iraqi Gilgamesh Dream Tablet'. TERTIARY, used only for the note that the Iraq Museum was undergoing renovation as at June 2026. Its assertion that the object was removed from the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal in 1853 is not adopted and is contradicted by every primary account of the tablet's modern history. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.