It's a crisis everywhere. Greece is suing Britain to return the "Elgin Marbles", The Egyptian Rosetta stone is also in British hands. The Vatican has stolen 2nd Temple artifacts in their "Hebraic collection". etc etc etc The solution is to return the artifacts to their rightful owners (if they can be found) The Babylonian tablets belong in Israel, because they belong to the Jewish people.

Let's face it, museums in places like Iraq and Syria are just jokes. The museums are looted, the artifacts stolen and sold on the black market. If anyone can afford to buy the artifacts and have them properly researched and displayed, then they should; and all this talk of 'stolen antiquities' should stop. Iraq and Syria are being overrun by psychopaths that will destroy everything they don't approve of. Better all of Syrian archaeology goes on display in Israel than to have it lost for ever in Syria. You think the Met and the British Museum are going to give back all their fantastic collections to the countries where the artifacts were found? Of course not. Those countries are, for the most part, incapable of properly handling the artifacts- so let people who know what they're doing do so. These tablets are right where they're supposed to be. Put them on display and let us enjoy them.

Those artifacts now fought over, including those unearthed many decades ago by the so-called "Orientalists", once held value only to the extent that Westerners were interested in them. Otherwise, to local Muslims, they were considered 'jahiliya', as representing pre-Islamic ignorance. It was those same Orientalists that decoded those artifacts, the ancient languages and the cultures. Of what value was the Sphinx or some ancient temple to the locals, which to them only represented idolatry. Ah, but now they have value. So they want it all back. And the artifacts of the Jewish communities that once lived there? They (the Iraqis) want them too.