The “recovery of Gilgamesh” refers to the piecemeal recovery of the world’s oldest epic poem from ancient, broken clay tablets, and the modern repatriation of high-profile looted artifacts, such as the 3,500-year-old Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, which was seized and officially returned to Iraq. 

The recovery and piecing together of The Epic of Gilgamesh spans two major historical phases: 

• 19th Century Archaeological Discovery: Beginning in the 1850s, thousands of shattered cuneiform tablets were excavated from the library of Assyrian King Assur-bani-pal in Nineveh. In the 1870s, self-taught scholar George Smith made world headlines by translating a broken tablet that contained a story of a great flood, essentially piecing together the lost epic. 
• 20th & 21st Century Repatriation: The Gilgamesh Dream Tablet—a rare fragment featuring a Sumerian poem of the king’s dream about his companion, Enkidu—was looted from an Iraqi museum during the 1991 Gulf War. It was smuggled, sold with fake documentation, and purchased for the Museum of the Bible in 2014. Following an investigation by US authorities, the US Department of Justice seized the artifact and formally returned it to Iraq. 

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/united-states-returns-iraq-rare-tablet-bearing-portion-epic-gilgamesh