Contact: Shane Wolfe
Office of Strategic Communications
1-914-822-4935

IRAQI POLICE DELIVER LOOTED ARTIFACT TO
IRAQ NATIONAL MUSEUM

Baghdad, Iraq…September 22, 2003- The Lady of Warka is home again. The 5,100 year-old limestone sculpture of a woman’s face - one of the most valuable pieces looted from the museum during the liberation of Iraq -- has been returned to the Iraq National Museum.

Iraqi police today delivered the piece to Iraq’s Minister of Culture Mufeed Muhammad Jawad Al Jazairee who in turn handed it Dr. Jabir Khalil Ibrahim, the head of Iraq’s Board of Antiquities.

Iraqi police, working in cooperation with the 812th U.S. Military Police Company, recovered the mask - also known as the Warka Mask and the Warka Head - on September 16 from a farm outside of Baghdad.

“We formed a team from our resources and U.S. military resources,” said Iraqi police Col. Safa Adeen Mahdi Salih. “We went to the site in the country and found the piece under some grass on the farm.”

Police made the recovery after receiving a tip from local Iraqis. Two people are in custody while police continue to investigate the matter.

Minister Al Jazairee today encouraged citizens to continue to provide information to authorities and expressed confidence that more of the looted antiquities would be recovered.

“It’s happening a little at a time,” said Al Jazairee. “In the next couple of months we’ll be doing other things to recover valuable things like the Warka Mask. As you see, we will be getting more and more of the looted antiquities.”

The Sumerian artifact is the earliest known sculpture of its kind. It measures about 20 centimeters in height and is believed to represent the goddess Inanna or one of her priestesses. Archeologists from the Deutsch Oriental Institute Expedition unearthed the piece in 1938 in Uruk (present day Warka).