By ASHLEY PARKER

WASHINGTON - The unlikely journey of 362 cuneiform clay tablets and plaques began in ancient Iraq as far back as 2030 B.C. But the tablets would pass through modern Dubai on their way to the United States, and survive a government seizure and the terrorist attacks of September 11, before finally winding up back at their birthplace.

In March 2001, the Customs Service got a tip that two boxes containing “clay objects” from Syria were being smuggled into the country from Dubai. Inspectors of a shipment in Newark, New Jersey, found the cuneiform tablets, each one smaller than a deck of cards, and an expert verified that they had been looted from southern Iraq.

That summer, the tablets were placed where all seized items were then stored ? in a vault in the basement of the United States Customs House at 6 World Trade Center. “We had stored the tablets down there, and then when 9/11 happened, the building was destroyed along with everything else,” said James McAndrew, a senior special agent at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency .

As soon as the basement was deemed safe to go back into, less than four weeks later, Customs agents brought out two heavily water-logged boxes containing the tablets. The relics were later appraised for $330,000, but Mr. McAndrew said it is hard to determine a true monetary .

The tablets represent a trail of everyday transactions in ancient Iraq - often receipts for goods and services, but also deeds, hymns, poetry and literature and various omens believed helpful in predicting the future. “If you find a whole collection of them, it’s literally like walking into and finding a diary of what life is like,” Mr. McAndrew said.

“It’s a rare moment in time when you can actually read the history of the people that was written at that time.” Unlike clay items today, which are usually fired in an oven and glazed to help preserve their integrity, the tablets had simply been left in the sun to dry, and they contained salt deposits from the Iraqi soil.

When they got wet - a combination of burst pipes and hosings from firefighters left the Customs House basement flooded ? the moisture caused the salt to surface, fracturing them. Enter John Russell, an art history professor who works with the State Department as a consultant on Iraqi cultural heritage. He knew that the objects were going to be returned to Iraq and decided “it would be great if we could get them returned in conserved and stable condition.” The State Department financed the project with roughly $100,000. The task of piecing the tablets back together fell to Dennis and Jane Drake Piechota, a husbandand- wife team of conservators .

“We attempt to re-mend everything, even the tiniest fragments that require tweezers to hold, because they have characters on them and it’s all about reading the tablet,” Mr. Piechota said. On September 7, the tablets were finally back in Iraq for a ceremony at the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad. “Iraq is rising from a period of considerable difficulty,”

Mr. Russell said, “and I think the restoration of these tablets and restoring them to their owners in a stable condition is kind of a nice metaphor for what the Iraqis themselves are doing.