A 3,200-year-old gold tablet is being returned to a German museum by a Long Island family.

A judge ruled today that the Ishtar temple tablet is not just an artifact after being appraised at around $10 million. The story of the tablet stretches back centuries.

A German archaeologist recovered it in what is now northern Iraq back in 1913. It was on display at a museum in Germany until the end of World War II.

No one is exactly sure how the tablet got into the hands of deceased Holocaust survivor Riven Flamenbaum, but his family believes that after the war he traded cigarettes from a Red Cross package with Russian soldiers who may have looted the museum.

Today's ruling ends years of court battles, but Flamenbaum's family says returning the tablet back to Germany opens old wounds of the Holocaust.

The tablet is on its way back to Germany, where it will be studied and put on display.