Tehran, IRNA – Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations said on Monday that the United States must return Achaemenid tablets archive to Iran with no excuse.
Majid Takht Ravanchi, Iran’s Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the UN, said that the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago borrowed the Achaemenid tablets for three years 90 years ago but has not returned all of them yet.
The archive is a part of Iran’s culture and history and belongs to the Iranian people, Ravanchi said, adding that the US has delayed returning the tablets under a new pretext each time.
Americans admit that the tablets were a loan to the US, but they haven’t been given back completely, the diplomat noted.
He said that Iran’s clear demand was that the tablets should be returned completely and healthily to Iran’s government.
The archive includes more than 30,000 clay tablets that were shipped to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago as a loan authorized by the Iranian Government in 1935 and arrived in Chicago in 1936.
The institute was slated to study the artifacts for three years and then return them to Iran, but it failed to fulfill the commitment for several decades.
Some parts of the archive have been returned to Iran in 1948, 1971, and 2004, but a large part of it is still held by the institute.
Source: Islamic Republic News Agency – IRNA
