Iraq has retrieved several stolen archaeological pieces from Japan and Switzerland through intensive diplomatic efforts, Shafaq News reported on February 10.

The announcement came during a joint press conference held by Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein and Culture Minister Ahmed Fakak Al-Badrani in Baghdad.

"It was a significant challenge to recover these Iraqi artefacts, including the Sun God statue and textile panels dating back centuries," said Hussein. "These archaeological pieces are not mere remains but our cherished heritage."

The foreign minister emphasised that the recovery had resulted from diplomatic efforts in both countries, pledging continued work to retrieve all possible artefacts through collaboration between the foreign and culture ministries.

Since 2008, the United States has returned more than 1,200 pieces to Iraq, whose cultural properties and museums were looted after 2003. In May 2023, President Abdul Latif Jamal Rashid announced the recovery of 6,000 artefacts on loan to the United Kingdom since 1923 for research purposes.

Iraqi heritage suffered significant damage due to lawlessness and looting, notably after the Islamic State seized control of large territories in 2014, including archaeological sites. Officials reported that militants used intermediaries to sell priceless treasures on the black market after their invasion of northern Iraq.

Mesopotamian civilisation, one of the world's oldest, flourished between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Ancient cities like Nineveh and Babylon, famous for its Hanging Gardens, were home to the Sumerian civilisation that gave the world cuneiform script, the earliest form of Western writing, around 3,100 years BC.

Russian archaeologists in May 2024 conducted their first fieldwork in Iraq’s Maysan Province after several decades, in a sign of growing cooperation between Baghdad and Moscow.

Iraq, Syria and Iran are often referred to as the cradle of civilisation and are among the richest archaeological regions in the world. Their landscape has layers of ancient history, home to the remnants of Mesopotamian, Persian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian civilisations. Meanwhile, the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers saw the birth of writing, the discovery of the wheel and some of the earliest known cities and empires.