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Iran, U.S. Allied in Protecting Artifacts
Excavated by a leading institute archeologist in the early 1930s, the tablets are considered a remarkable record of daily transactions from 2,500 years ago. Each text is about half the size of a deck of cards and bears characters in a dialect of Elamite, understood by perhaps a dozen scholars in the world.
"It tells you how the Persian empire worked," Stein said. While much knowledge of ancient Persia came from the accounts of others, most famously the Greek storyteller Herodotus, Stein called the tablets "the first chance to hear the Persians speaking of their own empire."
  Vanessa Muros, Sarah Barack and Alison Whyte of the Oriental Institute in Chicago pack Persepolis tablets for shipment to Iran in 2004. The tablets are now part of a lawsuit by some victims of a 1997 terrorist attack in Jerusalem. (Photos By Jason Smith) |
"It's valuable because it's a group of tablets, thousands of them from the same archive. It's like the same filing cabinet. They're very, very valuable scientifically," Stein said. He said the details largely concern food for people on diplomatic or military missions.
Loaned to the Oriental Institute seven decades ago for study, experts have painstakingly pieced together and deciphered many of the texts, with the understanding that they would be returned to Iran. The institute returned 37,000 tablets and fragments to Iran and was preparing another shipment when Strachman intervened.
Strachman filed suit in 2004 on behalf of his clients, including lead plaintiff Jenny Rubin, a New York fashion designer. He also targeted other holdings gathered from Iran by the institute and the nearby Field Museum.
"We are seeking to enforce the judgment that was awarded to my client," said Strachman, who considers it ironic that the terrorism-fighting Bush administration is backing Iran's immunity claims -- "blatantly opposing us," as he put it. Meanwhile, Iranian commentators have hammered U.S. authorities with "crazy conspiratorial things in recent days."
"They've gotten a little wackier," Strachman said. "They were saying this is a Zionist conspiracy."
In each case, attorneys for the defendants say that the property does not belong to Iran or that it is not subject to seizure. The museums sought to assert Iran's sovereign immunity claim to protect the artifacts, but U.S. District Judge Blanche M. Manning ruled that Iran must do so itself.
When Corcoran made his appearance last week after being retained by Iran on July 10, the case's dynamics shifted, said Patty Gerstenblith, a cultural property law specialist at DePaul University.
"It changes things pretty dramatically. If foreign sovereign immunity can be asserted, the case should be more or less resolved," she said. "Iran wins on this case, I think the other cases are blown out of the water."
That would suit Stein, who thinks larger issues are at stake.
"Would Egypt loan the treasures of King Tut if they thought they could be seized by anyone who had a beef with the government of Egypt?" he asked.
"Scholarship depends on the ability to trust each other to work above the level of politics and infighting. The whole structure of scholarly collaboration would fall apart, and the whole world would be very much the poorer for it."
