TEHRAN: Iran has received thousands of Achaemenid-era clay tablets from the United States in the fifth such instalment, following a drawn-out legal effort to repatriate the antiquities, said a statement posted on the presidency’s website late on Thursday.

“After the two-year follow-up of the government... the Achaemenid tablets confiscated by the American government were returned to the country,” the statement said.

The 3,506 tablets were repatriated on the plane that also brought home the Iranian delegation from New York after it attended the United Nations General Assembly.

This is the fifth batch of such antiquities returned to Iran.

“We hope that the rest of these tablets will be returned as soon as possible”, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said on Thursday night after returning from New York.

Found at the ruins of Persepolis, the capital of the Persian Achaemenid Empire which ruled from the sixth to fourth centuries BC in southern Iran, the repatriated tablets display how ancient society was organised and its economy managed.

Published in Dawn, September 23rd, 2023