Hobby Lobby agrees to pay fine, forfeit Iraqi artifacts

Hobby Lobby will pay a $3 million fine and forfeit thousands of Iraqi artifacts mislabeled and smuggled into the United States. Prosecutors who filed the civil complaint against the Christian retailer on Wednesday said Hobby Lobby in 2010 bought more than 5,500 artifacts, including clay tablets and blocks with ancient cuneiform writing, which had been packaged as “ceramic tiles.” The dealer shipped the packages to three different corporate addresses in Oklahoma City and said they arrived from Turkey. In September 2011, Hobby Lobby received a package with about 1,000 clay bullae, an ancient form of inscribed identification, from an Israeli dealer that falsely claimed the shipment originated from Israel. The civil complaint said Hobby Lobby failed to heed the warning of a cultural property law expert who said the artifacts might have been looted from archaeological sites in Iraq. Hobby Lobby President Steve Green said in a statement the company was new to acquisition and made some regrettable mistakes: “We should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled.” The Green family purchased the artifacts for their Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.