The Justice Department announced on Wednesday that the crafting giant Hobby Lobby, Inc. has agreed to forfeit thousands of ancient Mesopotamian artifacts that it had illegally imported from Iraq. Along with a hefty $3 million payment, this concludes a federal investigation that has been going on since 2011, when United States customs agents seized an incoming shipment of cuneiform tablets, labeled “hand made clay tiles” and headed for the Hobby Lobby headquarters in Oklahoma City.

It may not be obvious why Hobby Lobby would be interested in 3,000-year-old Mesopotamian antiquities. These tablets formed part of the private collection of biblical artifacts purchased by Hobby Lobby — 40,000 items strong — destined for eventual display at the Museum of the Bible, scheduled to open this November in Washington, D.C., just steps from the National Mall. The Museum of the Bible was founded and funded by the Green family, the owners of Hobby Lobby, and they continue to play a central role in its administration, fundraising, and mission.

When we first broke the story of this investigation in 2015, it was suggested to us that this was merely a matter of “incomplete paperwork.” It is now abundantly clear that this was untrue. Yesterday, Steve Green, the president of Hobby Lobby, said in a statement, “We should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled.” But even before these purchases, Green and his partners had been given clear guidelines by the antiquities law expert Patty Gerstenblith: “I read them the riot act,” she said. Nevertheless, they proceeded to purchase artifacts of dubious origin from unscrupulous sellers and then import them from Israel and the United Arab Emirates with falsified documentation designed to avoid customs inspection.

The particular legal issue of falsified import papers is merely the tip of a much larger ethical iceberg. The real issue here is the black market in looted antiquities, a market that has loomed beneath the surface of storied museum collections and private holdings for many years, but that became especially visible during the first Iraq War and the period of regional destabilization that followed.