(In subsequently packing up these objects, it became clear that there were 2,000 more Iraqi artifacts, making the total about 13,000.) Kloha says the museum is awaiting confirmation from Iraq that it wants its 8,000-plus pieces returned. The museum announced in March that it would return more than 11,000 of those items to the Iraqi and Egyptian governments. He declined to disclose how much the chain paid for the objects. Kloha says it's not clear whether the buyers commissioned by Hobby Lobby even saw the items before purchasing them. Most were purchased in lots - as many as 2,000 pieces at a time. Kloha says a museum investigation conducted by staff and independent scholars has determined that between 5% and 10% of the roughly 8,000 objects now being returned to Iraq are fake.

'We can't even tell sometimes which particular item belonged to which acquisition, because it just wasn't documented either at the acquisition point or at the delivery point.' 'They were purchased with scant descriptions,' Kloha says. Kloha describes them as 'nothing remarkable.' None of these has been displayed in the museum. Another 5,000 items, Egyptian papyri and textiles, acquired during the same period, also lack proper documentation.

Kloha says Hobby Lobby acquired the items, most of them clay tablets, between 20 from sources in the U.S., the U.K.

invaded Iraq in 2003 and troops failed to protect cultural sites. Hobby Lobby acquired them so haphazardly for the museum, he says, that it may never be known how they came onto the market.ДЄrchaeologists say some of these items may have even come from Iraq's national museum, which was looted after the U.S. Furthermore, if I learn of other items in the collection for which another person or entity has a better claim, I will continue to do the right thing with those items.'Д®ven so, fresh controversies - over previously acquired objects, including Dead Sea Scroll fragments found to be fake and items from Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt - have continued to dog the museum.Д¬hief curator Jeffrey Kloha, who was hired in 2017, after the controversial acquisitions were made, tells NPR that the museum is discussing the return to Iraq of another 8,106 pieces. 'After some early missteps,' Green said in March, he decided he 'would only acquire items with reliable, documented provenance.

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