The Minister of Cultural Heritage and Tourism of the Islamic Republic announced that the United States has returned 1783 tablets from the Achaemenid period back to Iran.

Ali Asghar Mounesan said on Tuesday that these clay tablets have been returned after 84 years of legal battles between Iran and the United States.

According to the minister, the writings on these tablets are Cuneiform in the Elamite language. The content of these tablets is about the management of financial resources, wages, and roads.

Mounesian claimed that in 2004, the US government brought a legal case against the Islamic Republic and tried to take these tablets as compensation for Hamas terrorist attack in Jerusalem.  The United States supreme court voted against the US government on the case.

In 2018, the Cultural Heritage Ministry talked of efforts to bring back 12000 tablets in September and 30000 tablets in January of the next year.

It was announced in April of 2019 that the US Treasury has not allowed the return of all the tablets.

The tablets are said to have been found in 1954 and 1955 in an excavation mission by Iranian and American archeologists in Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire.

During the dig, almost 30000 tablets were recovered, out of which almost 6000 were unharmed.

The tablets date back to 500 BC during the reign of Darius The Great of the Achaemenid dynasty.

According to the laws of the time, these tablets were divided between Iran and Chicago University.