A gallery of Assyrian statues and friezes at the Iraqi National Museum.
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For now, however, Iraqi officials acknowledge that priceless artifacts are probably leaving the country in large numbers even as efforts to recover them increase. "I don't think we can stop it completely," says Qais Hussen Rashied, director of investigation and excavation at the Iraqi ministry of antiquities. "But we can limit it at least." Happy to have their tablets back from Peru, museum officials are still not sure what they actually say: Sumerian-language experts need to be called in to decipher the writing on the stones. Until then, they remain tucked away in the museum's storerooms, awaiting a time when they, like the long-absent visitors shuffling through the restored galleries, can return.
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