I'm thrilled to share that I recently appeared on the newest season of PBS's Antiques Roadshow, filmed at the historic Grant's Farm and airing as Season 30, Episode 15 (Hour 3) on May 11, 2026.

A Remarkable 4,000-Year-Old Discovery
The guest brought in a truly extraordinary object: a Sumerian cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia, passed down through his family for generations. According to family lore, a great-uncle serving as a British officer in Iraq in the late 1800s/early 1900s acquired the piece before being killed during a local insurrection, with his belongings — including this tablet — sent back to England. Having lived and worked across the Middle East, the owner recognized the object's significance but could not read the script itself.

What the Tablet Tells Us
Cuneiform is one of the earliest writing systems ever developed — created by pressing reeds into wet clay to form pictographs, a technology that helped small villages evolve into the first complex urban city-states. This particular example is a small, fully intact "biscuit"-shaped tablet inscribed on all sides.

Thanks to a scholarly colleague, I was able to provide an exact translation: it is an Ur III administrative tablet dating to year nine of King Amar-Suen of Ur, third month, recording barley rations to be ground for goats and delivered to the granary by officials in Igi-Shara, with the transaction handled through an intermediary named Lugina. That places the piece at roughly 2100–2200 BC — over 4,000 years old.

The Provenance Breakthrough
The real magic happened on camera. Inside the tablet's little protective box was a handwritten card — seen for the first time that day — dated 1916 and almost certainly written by Albert Clay, the pioneering Assyriologist at Yale University. The card identifies the tablet as coming from Umma (modern Jokha), from the temple archives of the god Shara, and dates it to the Ur Dynasty, "300 years before Abraham".

Why Provenance Matters More Than Ever
Given recent turmoil in the Middle East and the serious issue of looted antiquities, provenance for Mesopotamian objects has become extremely complex. A documented collection history predating the 1970 UNESCO Convention on cultural property is the gold standard — and this 1916 Yale card places the tablet safely in the historical record more than a half-century before that threshold.

The Appraisal
Because of that exceptional provenance, I issued an insurance valuation of $3,000. The owner confirmed the piece is not for sale — but it will now be entered into the world cuneiform database, contributing to the permanent scholarly record.

See the footage here!

A Note of Thanks
It was a genuine privilege to represent Art For Eternity Gallery (New York, NY) on Antiques Roadshow and to help a family understand the depth of what they had preserved for more than a century. Moments like this — where a small clay "biscuit" connects a Missouri family, a British officer, a Yale scholar from 1916, and a Sumerian scribe from 2040 BCE — are exactly why I do this work.

Tune in to PBS to catch the full segment, and visit Art For Eternity to explore more antiquities with documented histories