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Ancient Treasure Now Family's Holocaust Talisman

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Member: Dec-10-1996
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2. Dispute over ancient gold tablet goes to NY court

Oct-15-2013 at 07:31 AM (UTC+3 Nineveh, Assyria)

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Dispute over ancient gold tablet goes to NY court
By Michael Virtanen, The Associated Press. October 14, 2013


According to court documents, the tablet dates to 1243 to 1207 B.C., the reign of King Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria. Placed in the foundation of the temple of the fertility goddess, its 21 lines call on those who find the temple to honor the king's name.

A dispute over an ancient gold tablet pitting a Holocaust survivor's heirs against the German museum that lost the Assyrian relic in World War II will be argued Tuesday at New York's highest court.

The 9.5-gram tablet, about the size of a credit card, was excavated a century ago by German archaeologists from the Ishtar Temple in what is now northern Iraq. It went on display in Berlin in 1934, was put in storage as the war began and later disappeared.

Riven Flamenbaum, who died in 2003, brought it to the U.S. after surviving the Auschwitz concentration camp and settling on Long Island. Family lore says he had traded two packs of cigarettes to a Russian soldier for the tablet after he was rescued from Auschwitz.

"Part of the problem was that since the museum waited until after he died to make a claim, I have not heard testimony in court as to how he got it," said Steven Schlesinger, representing the estate. "Anything the heirs can say would have been hearsay."

Schlesigner said he believes Flamenbaum was trading Red Cross packages and anything else he could get for silver and gold.

The tablet now sits in a safe deposit box in New York. One recent estimate put its value at $10 million, he said. The family wants to donate it to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, Schlesinger said.

The Court of Appeals will decide whether the museum waited too long, more than 60 years, before trying to reclaim it. A Surrogate's Court judge on Long Island said it had unreasonably delayed, but a midlevel court last year ruled the other way.

"We established a superior right of possession and title," said Raymond Dowd, attorney for the Vorderasiatisches Museum, part of the renowned Pergamon Museum and its large collection of antiquities.

The original judge erroneously thought the museum knew in 1954 the tablet was in New York and didn't pursue it, while the midlevel court concluded it didn't know until 2006, when its claim was pursued, he said.

According to court documents, the tablet dates to 1243 to 1207 B.C., the reign of King Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria. Placed in the foundation of the temple of the fertility goddess, its 21 lines call on those who find the temple to honor the king's name.

The tablet was excavated by German archaeologists from about 1908 to 1914 in what was then the Ottoman Empire, with Germany giving half the found antiquities to Istanbul, Dowd said. The modern state of Iraq has declined to claim it, he said.

In 1945, the Berlin museum's premises was overrun, with many items taken by Russia, others by German troops and some pilfered by people who took shelter in the museum, Dowd said. The museum director was not in a position to say who took it, only that it disappeared.

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 Ancient Treasure Now Family's Holocaust Talisman [View All], Atouradmin, 00:49 AM, Apr-14-2010, (0)  

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Assyria \ã-'sir-é-ä\ n (1998)   1:  an ancient empire of Ashur   2:  a democratic state in Bet-Nahren, Assyria (northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, southeastern Turkey and eastern Syria.)   3:  a democratic state that fosters the social and political rights to all of its inhabitants irrespective of their religion, race, or gender   4:  a democratic state that believes in the freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture in faithfulness to the principles of the United Nations Charter — Atour synonym

Ethnicity, Religion, Language
» Israeli, Jewish, Hebrew
» Assyrian, Christian, Aramaic
» Saudi Arabian, Muslim, Arabic
Assyrian \ã-'sir-é-an\ adj or n (1998)   1:  descendants of the ancient empire of Ashur   2:  the Assyrians, although representing but one single nation as the direct heirs of the ancient Assyrian Empire, are now doctrinally divided, inter sese, into five principle ecclesiastically designated religious sects with their corresponding hierarchies and distinct church governments, namely, Church of the East, Chaldean, Maronite, Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholic.  These formal divisions had their origin in the 5th century of the Christian Era.  No one can coherently understand the Assyrians as a whole until he can distinguish that which is religion or church from that which is nation -- a matter which is particularly difficult for the people from the western world to understand; for in the East, by force of circumstances beyond their control, religion has been made, from time immemorial, virtually into a criterion of nationality.   3:  the Assyrians have been referred to as Aramaean, Aramaye, Ashuraya, Ashureen, Ashuri, Ashuroyo, Assyrio-Chaldean, Aturaya, Chaldean, Chaldo, ChaldoAssyrian, ChaldoAssyrio, Jacobite, Kaldany, Kaldu, Kasdu, Malabar, Maronite, Maronaya, Nestorian, Nestornaye, Oromoye, Suraya, Syriac, Syrian, Syriani, Suryoye, Suryoyo and Telkeffee. — Assyrianism verb

Aramaic \ar-é-'máik\ n (1998)   1:  a Semitic language which became the lingua franca of the Middle East during the ancient Assyrian empire.   2:  has been referred to as Neo-Aramaic, Neo-Syriac, Classical Syriac, Syriac, Suryoyo, Swadaya and Turoyo.

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