A 4,000-year-old sculpture will be handed back to Iraq after an investigation found that it had been looted, the British Museum said on Monday. According to AFP, specialist London police called museum experts after an the plaque surfaced online for sale in May last year with only limited details of its provenance.

The online listing described it as “a Western Asiatic Akkadian tablet” but the experts determined the limestone wall plaque came from an ancient Sumerian temple dating to around 2,400 BC. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Sumerian temple was excavated and looted. It was looted again in the 1990s during the Gulf War and most recently in 2003 during the Iraq War, the museum said, without specifying when the plaque was taken.

“This important piece was illegally removed from Iraq and discovered by authorities in the UK,” the British Museum said in a statement. “Temple plaques such as this are rare and there are only around 50 examples known in existence.”

The London-based institution said the Iraq has “generously permitted it to go on display” at the museum before it is repatriated. “The British Museum is absolutely committed to the fight against illicit trade and damage to cultural heritage,” its director Hartwig Fischer said.

Jim Wingrave, of the Metropolitan Police, urged antiquities’ buyers to “conduct a thorough due diligence process before every purchase”, especially when dealing with items from recent war zones like Iraq.