An appellate court in Brooklyn ruled that the estate of a Holocaust survivor would have to return an ancient gold tablet discovered in modern-day Iraq to a Berlin museum, according to this New York Law Journal article.
A Nassau County Surrogate Court had ruled the museum’s claim to the tablet had been barred by the doctrine of laches in 2010, but the Brooklyn Court reversed the decision yesterday. It stated that the “executor did not establish that the museum failed to exercise reasonable diligence to locate the tablet,” as required by laches.
The current owner Riven Flamenbaum had obtained the gold tablet, which documents the construction of the Ishtar Temple around 1243 to 1207 B.C., from Russians on the black market just after World War II. The work went missing from the Vorderasiatisches Museum around that time.
After Flamenbaum’s death, his son notified the museum of the estate’s possession of the tablet, leading the museum to seek its recovery.
[This entry was drafted with the assistance of Nicole Dornbusch].