The Great London:
Heritage

A painting hanging on the wall in an art gallery tells one story. What lies beneath its surface may tell quite another.

Often in a Rembrandt, a Vermeer, a Leonardo, a Van Eyck, or any other great masterpiece of western art, the layers of paint are covered with varnish, sometimes several coats applied at different times over their history. The varnish was originally applied to protect the paint underneath and make the colors appear more vivid, but over the centuries it can degrade. Conservators carefully clean off the old varnish and replace it with new, but to do this safely it is useful to understand the materials and structure of the painting beneath the surface. Conservation scientists can glean this information by analyzing the hidden layers of paint and varnish.

Now, researchers from Nottingham Trent University's School of Science and Technology have partnered with the National Gallery in London to develop an instrument capable of non-invasively capturing subsurface details from artwork at a high resolution. Their setup, published in an Optics Express paper, will allow conservators and conservation scientists to more effectively peek beneath the surface of paintings and artifacts to learn not only how the artist built up the original composition, but also what coatings have been applied to it over the years.

Traditionally, analyzing the layers of a painting requires taking a very small physical sample -- usually around a quarter of a millimeter across -- to view under a microscope. The technique provides a cross-section of the painting's layers, which can be imaged at high resolution and analyzed to gain detailed information on the chemical composition of the paint, but does involve removing some original paint, even if only a very tiny amount. When studying valuable masterpieces, conservation scientists must therefore sample very selectively from already-damaged areas, often only taking a few minute samples from a large canvas.

More recently, researchers have begun to use non-invasive imaging techniques to study paintings and other historical artifacts. For example, Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) was originally developed for medical imaging but has also been applied to art conservation. Because it uses a beam of light to scan the intact painting without removing physical samples, OCT allows researchers to analyze the painting more extensively. However, the spatial resolution of commercially-available OCT setups is not high enough to fully map the fine layers of paint and varnish.

The Nottingham Trent University researchers gave OCT an upgrade. "We're trying to see how far we can go with non-invasive techniques. We wanted to reach the kind of resolution that conventional destructive techniques have reached," explained Haida Liang, who led the project.

In OCT, a beam of light is split: half is directed towards the sample, and the other half is sent to a reference mirror. The light scatters off both of these surfaces. By measuring the combined signal, which effectively compares the returned light from the sample versus the reference, the apparatus can determine how far into the sample the light penetrated. By repeating this procedure many times across an area, researchers can build up a cross-sectional map of the painting.

Liang and her colleagues used a broadband laser-like light source -- a concentrated beam of light containing a wide range of frequencies. The wider frequency range allows for more precise data collection, but such light sources were not commercially available until recently.

Along with a few other modifications, the addition of the broadband light source enabled the apparatus to scan the painting at a higher resolution. When tested on a late 16th-century copy of a Raphael painting, housed at the National Gallery in London, it performed as well as traditional invasive imaging techniques.

"We are able to not only match the resolution but also to see some of the layer structures with better contrast. That's because OCT is particularly sensitive to changes in refractive index," said Liang. In some places, the ultra-high resolution OCT setup identified varnish layers that were almost indistinguishable from each other under the microscope.

Eventually, the researchers plan to make their instrument available to other art institutions. It could also be useful for analyzing historical manuscripts, which cannot be physically sampled in the same way that paintings can.

In a parallel paper recently published in Optics Express, the researchers also improved the depth into the painting that their apparatus can scan. The two goals are somewhat at odds: using a longer wavelength light source could enhance the penetration depth, but shorter wavelength light (as used in their current setup) provides the best resolution.

"The next challenge is perhaps to be able to do that in one instrument, as well as to extract chemical information from different layers," said Liang.

Source: The Optical Society [April 13, 2015]

The British Government is refusing to negotiate with Greece about the return of the so-called Elgin Marbles despite a request to do so from the United Nations, a decision that could prompt Athens to begin legal action for the first time.

British campaigners likened the UK’s stance to “clinging on to stolen booty for dear life” and contrasted it with the “generous act” of returning the sculptures to help a friendly country on the brink of economic collapse. Youth unemployment has hit 50 per cent and suicide rates have soared amid a crisis so severe the Financial Times has warned Greece could turn into a “quasi slave economy”.

In 2013, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) invited the UK to take part in mediation about the marbles, created 2,500 years ago to decorate the Parthenon temple in Athens. Then last year it asked for a response by 31 March.

However a Government source said the UK “won’t be able to make any significant announcement this side of the [May] election”.

A motion calling for the UK to reply to Unesco and move to return the marbles is to be filed in the House of Commons on Monday.

The failure to respond in time could prompt Greece to abandon decades of diplomacy and take legal action, possibly in the European Court of Human Rights. A team of lawyers in London, including leading QC Geoffrey Robertson and Amal Clooney, wife of actor George, is preparing a “book-length” document setting out the options.

A source who has advised successive Greek governments said the main problem was finding a court to take jurisdiction in the case, but once that hurdle was overcome “then the lawyers are saying there is about a 75 to 80 per cent chance of success”.

The marbles are regarded as some of the finest works of art in history and a symbol of the birth of Western civilisation. Some sculptures were taken to Britain by Lord Elgin in controversial circumstances just over 200 years ago when Greece was ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

Dr Elena Korka, director of antiquities at the Greek Culture Ministry, said the central issue was “reunifying these exceptional, outstanding and most important sculptures, which belong as an integral part of a unique symbolic monument for the whole world”.

“This is the essence of it, making something which exists today as whole as it can be… this is what the public wants, every poll shows it. It’s such an important issue. Even if Greece didn’t ask for it, the whole world would,” she said.

She said if the British authorities relented it would be “a day of true joy, not only for the monument itself but I think for the value of the gesture for the sake of co-operation”. “It would definitely help the [public] morale. It would be a huge boost,” she said.

Asked about the prospect of legal action, Dr Korka said Greece was “still so much into the process of mediation that we’re not thinking of the next step”. “We haven’t exhausted the possibilities so let’s not go so fast,” she said.

She added that the UK’s silence since 2013 was “not so polite really”.

David Hill, chairman of the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures in Australia, said there was a “growing appreciation even among people who are timid about the prospect of litigation that we have reached the point of last resort if this UNESCO gambit fails. The diplomatic and political strategies of the last 30 years have not produced any progress at all.”

Polls have consistently showed strong support in Britain for returning the marbles. In November, a survey for The Times found there was a two-to-one majority in favour.

Andrew George, chairman of Marbles Reunited and Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives, said: “One of our friends is down on their uppers and we can offer something to them that might make their lives easier and give them a lift, which can only be good for their economy.

“It would be a generous act which would improve Britain’s standing in the world. At the moment we look rather grubby… like we are clinging on to stolen booty for dear life.”

He said he planned to lodge an early day motion in the Commons tomorrow calling for  the Government to “demonstrate that Britain is prepared to... reunite these British-held Parthenon sculptures with those now displayed in the purpose-built Acropolis Museum in the shadow of the monument to which they belong, the Parthenon in Athens”.

The British Museum, which denies Elgin stole the marbles, argues that it “tells the story of cultural achievement throughout the world” and the Parthenon sculptures are “a significant part of that story”. It regards itself as “a unique resource for the world” with visitors able to “re-examine cultural identities and explore the complex network of interconnected human cultures” within its walls.

“The Parthenon Sculptures are a vital element in this interconnected world collection. They are a part of the world’s shared heritage and transcend political boundaries,” it says.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said it would “respond in due course” to UNESCO.

Author: Ian Johnston | Source: Indpendent [March 07, 2015]

An ancient Cypriot clay ring-vase (kernos - ceremonial vessel), dated to the Protogeometric period (1050-900 BC), has been repatriated to Cyprus from the United Kingdom. The vessel was identified by the Department of Antiquities at a London-based antiquities dealer’s shop, as a result of the Department's routine online investigations.

Following a request by the Department of Antiquities and the Cyprus Police, the shop handed over the vessel to the London Metropolitan Police, which in turn, handed it over to the High Commission of the Republic of Cyprus in London, in October 2016. A Conservator of the Department of Antiquities supervised the packing of the antiquity in London and escorted it to Cyprus on 16 November 2016.

The vessel was part of Mr Christakis Hadjiprodromou’s registered private collection that was kept in his house in Ammochostos (Famagusta) prior to the Turkish invasion in 1974. As a result of the invasion, Mr Hadjiprodromou’s residence was pillaged, and his collection was looted, its objects scattered around the world.

It is noted that another antiquity (a clay horse-and-rider of the Cypro-Archaic period, approx. 700 BC), from the same collection, was repatriated from London in July 2016.

Source: Department of Antiquities, Republic of Cyprus [November 24, 2016]

A private citizen’s group called the “Athenians’ Association” said on Thursday they filed a lawsuit at the European Court of Human Rights against the United Kingdom over the removal of the Parthenon Marbles by Lord Elgin in the 19th century, the association said in a press conference in Plaka on Thursday.

The association, which opened in 1895 and among whose aims is to research the history of Athens and help preserve of its cultural monuments, said the decision was taken after its board was informed about Britain’s refusal to participate in a mediation procedure, as part of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Goods in the Country of Origin.

“The reason we disclose our action today is because not only was the suit not rejected [by the Court], but it was officially lodged and recently the Court requested clarifications, which presages that it will reach the courtroom,” the member of the association’s board, Stratis Stratigis said at the press conference.

Stratigis has been entrusted with monitoring the legal aspect of the suit, and is also responsible for coordinating the actions and contacts that will be needed in Greece and abroad.

He said the Athens Association has been following the issue closely for years and when it realized in March 2015 that Britain had rejected even its participation in the mediation procedure, it decided it was an opportunity to appeal before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg as a private association, independently from the State.

Stratigis also clarified that this move by the association does not affect in any way Greece’s right to sue when it chooses at a national or international court.

“Besides, the issue of recovering architectural elements recognized by UNESCO World Heritage monuments which have been stolen is ongoing,” he said. “It is therefore in the country’s interest to keep the issue alive in international public opinion and periodically update on the issue with appropriate actions,” he added.

According to the association’s press release which followed the press conference, its founding members comprised of descendants of the Athenians who stood up against the destruction of the Parthenon by Lord Elgin. It also said that one of the very first actions undertaken by the Association was an event organised in 1896 to commemorate the liberation of the Acropolis from the Ottoman Turks.

During the event, the association’s deputy chairman, Professor Theodossios Venizelos (1821-1900) said the Parthenon was “a place of daily worship, the holy of holies, a life good for our ancestors and that the Athenians strongly protested against the despoilment of the Acropolis’ extant statues by Elgin.”

Source: ANA-MPA [February 19, 2016]

Egypt's embassy in London received a limestone relief that had been stolen from Queen Hatshepsut's temple in Luxor, the Ministry of Antiquities said.

Shaaban Abdel Gawad, general supervisor of the ministry's antiquities repatriation department, in a statement said that the ministry repatriated the relief in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the British Museum after proving its possession. The recovery of the relief is "very important" especially since it will help in restoration work currently being carried out by a Polish archaeological mission, he said.

The relief, which is carved in limestone and engraved with hieroglyphic symbols, was stolen from the temple in 1975 and smuggled out of the country, he said. It was put on show in an auction hall in Spain and a British antiquities dealer bought it, the statement said.

Last year, U.S. officials returned dozens of illegally smuggled artifacts to Egypt, including a Graeco-Roman style Egyptian sarcophagus.

Source: The Associated Press [December 20, 2016]

Iraq's government is investigating reports that the ancient archaeological site of Khorsabad in northern Iraq is the latest to be attacked by the Islamic State militant group.

Adel Shirshab, the country's tourism and antiquities minister, told The Associated Press there are concerns the militants will remove artifacts and damage the site, located 15 kilometers (9 miles) northeast of Mosul. Saeed Mamuzini, a Kurdish official from Mosul, told the AP that the militants had already begun demolishing the Khorsabad site on Sunday, citing multiple witnesses.

On Friday, the group razed 3,000-year old Nimrud and on Saturday, they bulldozed 2,000-year old Hatra — both UNESCO world heritage sites. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has called the destruction a "war crime," and a statement by his spokesman on Sunday night said Ban was "outraged by the continuing destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq" by theIslamic State group.

Khorsabad was constructed as a new capital of Assyria by King Sargon II shortly after he came to power in 721 B.C. and abandoned after his death in 705 B.C. It features a 24-meter thick wall with a stone foundation and seven gates.

Since it was a single-era capital, few objects linked to Sargon II himself were found. However, the site is renowned for shedding light on Assyrian art and architecture.

The sculptured stone slabs that once lined the palace walls are now displayed in museums in Baghdad, Paris, London and Chicago.

The Islamic State group currently controls about a third of Iraq and Syria. The Sunni extremist group has been campaigning to purge ancient relics they say promote idolatry that violates their fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law. A video released last week shows them smashing artifacts in the Mosul museum and in January, the group burned hundreds of books from the Mosul library and Mosul University, including many rare manuscripts.

At a press conference earlier Sunday, Shirshab said they have called for an extraordinary session of the U.N. Security Council to address the crisis in Iraq.

"The world should bear the responsibility and put an end to the atrocities of the militants, otherwise I think the terrorist groups will continue with their violent acts," he said.

Author: Sameer N. Yacoub | Source: Associated Press [March 09, 2015]

The head of an ancient Greek statue of extraordinary artistic and historical value will finally arrive back in Italy on Friday – almost three decades after being illegally ripped from the ground.

The stunning statue had been on display at the J.Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles but was eventually discovered to be Italian property after archaeologists identified one of the statue's beard curls among fragments found at a looted site in Sicily.

The unique terracotta head depicts Hades, god of the underworld. He is shown with a bushy blue beard and curly hair, which still bear a good deal of the blue and red pigments with which they were painted 2,400 years ago.

But the mission to bring Hades home has taken years.

“It was great to be able to work with our Sicilian counterparts to identify the provenance of the head,” a spokesperson for the museum told The Local.

"The process of identifying the head took two years and the museum agreed to give it back in 2013. Since then it's been in storage while we waited for instructions from Sicily for its eventual return. Officials finally arrived to pick up the statue this week.”

The head had been on display in Los Angeles since 1985, when the museum acquired it from Belgian businessman - and long time partner of former US First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy - Maurice Tempelsman, for $500,000 (€460,000).

Templeman sold the piece through successful London art-dealer Robin Symes, who specialized in fencing looted antiques, often of Italian provenance. In January 2005, Symes was sentenced to 21 years in jail (of which he served a mere seven) for trafficking stolen pieces.

On Friday, the statue will finally take pride of place at Enna's Adione museum, a stone's throw from the site where it was originally taken: an outcome which has satisfied Italians on both sides of the Atlantic.

“We owe it above all to the archaeologists who helped identify that ceramic lock of blue hair among the remains of a fraudulent dig site,” said Italy's Consul General in LA, Antonio Verde.

In January 2014, several other pieces of looted art were returned to Enna's Adione museum by the J. Paul Getty museum.

Items included a two-metre Greek marble statue of Venus, which the museum had also bought from Symes in 1988 for an eye-watering $18 million (€16.4 million).

Former curator of the museum, Marion True, was placed on trial in Italy in 2005, but was acquitted after the charges against her expired in 2012.

But the institution is not alone in giving Italy back illegally acquired objects. In recent years pieces have been returned from other high-profile institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

According to one Italian prosecutor, artworks from more than 100,000 raided tombs worth in excess of €460 million have been illegally taken out of the country.

Author: Patrick Browne | Source: The Local [January 31, 2016]

The first Chinese firearm with an imperial reign mark ever to be offered at auction sold for 1.985 million pounds (US$2.5 million), the auction house >Sotheby's London announced in a statement on Wednesday.

The gun -- a brilliantly designed and exquisitely crafted musket, produced in imperial workshops -- was created for the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing dynasty, arguably the greatest collector and patron of the arts in Chinese history.

Estimated at 1 million to 1.5 million pounds (1.33 million to 1.99 million dollars), the firearm ignited a 10-minute bidding battle before finally selling to an Asian private collector.

"This gun ranks as one of the most significant Chinese treasures ever to come to auction. Today's result will be remembered alongside landmark sales of other extraordinary objects that epitomize the pinnacle of imperial craftsmanship during the Qing dynasty," said Robert Bradlow, senior director of Chinese Works of Art, Sotheby's London in a statement to Xinhua.

"Over the last 10 years we've seen the market for historical Chinese works of art go from strength to strength, with collectors drawn from across the globe and exceptional prices achieved whether the sale is staged in London, Hong Kong or New York," he added.

The musket bears not only the imperial reign mark on top of its barrel, but in addition, incised on the breech of the barrel are four Chinese characters which denote the gun's peerless ranking -- "Supreme Grade, Number One." This exceptional grading makes it unique amongst the known extant guns from imperial workshops, and asserts its status as one of the most important firearms produced for Emperor Qianlong.

According to Sotheby's London, the advent of Western firearm technology sparked the production of muskets in imperial workshops, and this modern mode of weaponry had unquestionable advantages over the traditional bow and arrow for hunting.

Using only the most luxurious materials, imperial muskets were created in very small numbers for Emperor Qianlong. While the Emperor is unlikely ever to have held a gun in battle, he would regularly hunt with a musket.

The auction house said the Supreme Number One is closely related to six celebrated, named imperial Qianlong muskets in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, which appear to correspond with seven muskets listed in the Qing work, Collected Statutes of the Qing Dynasty with Illustrations. These guns were probably graded in the same way as the Supreme Number One, but with lower grade and/or number ("Supreme Grade, Number Two", "Top Grade, Number 2").

Revered as one of the most powerful "Sons of Heaven," Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799) was the longest-lived and de-facto longest-reigning emperor in Chinese history (1736-1795).

Source: Xinhua [November 13, 2016]

A long-running smuggling scandal involving temple looters in India and a high-profile New York art dealer has widened after an independent review found that the National Gallery of Australia may have been among the prestigious art galleries duped by false documentation.

The Canberra-based gallery, which is Australia's leading cultural institution, said in mid-February that it had identified 22 objects with suspect origins in its Asian art collection, including 14 works bought from former New York-based dealer Subhash Kapoor for $11 million.

Kapoor is in custody in Chennai, India, awaiting trial on art theft charges following his arrest in Germany in October 2011 and extradition to India in mid-2012.

The Canberra gallery said an independent review of its Asian art provenance project by a former High Court judge, Susan Crennan, found the 22 objects had "insufficient or questionable" documentation of their provenance.

One of the objects, a 900-year-old Chola-era bronze statue entitled "Shiva as Lord of the Dance (Nataraja)" has already been returned to India. Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott handed it over to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September 2014, along with a stone statue of Ardhanariswara (Shiva in half-female form), dating from around 1100. That statue was in the collection of another leading Australian gallery, the Sydney-based Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Both of these Hindu art treasures allegedly were stolen from temples in Tamil Nadu in southern India and shipped to Kapoor.

The Canberral gallery bought the Shiva Nataraja from Kapoor's Art of the Past gallery on Madison Avenue in New York in 2008 for $5.1 million, while the New South Wales gallery paid Kapoor 300,000 Australian dollars ($220,800) in 2004 for the Ardhanariswara. The provenance documents he provided now appear to be fraudulent, according to Crennan's report. "There is evidence that the object (the Shiva Nataraja) was stolen from an identified temple in Tamil Nadu ... and that it left India in late 2006 and was given a false ownership history," she wrote. Kapoor is alleged to have masterminded the theft of 28 bronzes from two temples in Tamil Nadu in 2006 and 2008, and their illegal export to the U.S., according to the Economic Offences Wing of the Tamil Nadu police. U.S. authorities have seized $100 million worth of antiquities from Kapoor's gallery and an associated business, Nimbus Import Export, and Kapoor may face U.S. charges after his Chennai trial. Delhi-born Kapoor, 66, moved to the U.S. in 1974 and is a U.S. citizen.

The two Australian galleries are not the only major institutions to have made purchases from Kapoor; galleries in Singapore, Germany, the U.S. and Canada have returned art objects to India over the past year.

A private New York collector surrendered a $1 million bronze to U.S. authorities in mid-2015 after it was identified as stolen. It has also become clear that many major U.S. institutions dealt with Kapoor, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio and the Smithsonian's Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington DC.

Crennan's independent report on the Canberra gallery's Asian Art Provenance project, published on Feb. 17, covers 36 objects acquired between 1968 and 2013, including the 14 bought from Kapoor between 2002 and 2011.

Crennan found that only 12 of the 36 had satisfactory provenance, while two others needed further research and the remaining 22 had insufficient or questionable provenance documentation. The gallery aims eventually to publish the provenance of all 5,000 objects in its Asian art collection.

Aside from the Kapoor purchases, the 36 objects whose documentation was reviewed by Crennan included a red sandstone sculpture, the "Seated Buddha," which the gallery bought from Nancy Wiener Galleries in New York for $1,080,000 in 2007. Last year, after discussions about how the Kushan-period sculpture -- created between 200 BC and 400 AD -- was exported from India, Wiener agreed to refund the purchase price to the Canberra gallery and undertook to return the sculpture to India in 2016.

"Exemplary collaboration"

India's High Commissioner in Australia, Navdeep Suri, praised the Canberra gallery's actions, saying its collaboration with the Archaeological Survey of India to determine the provenance of the "Seated Buddha" was "truly exemplary." He said the Australian gallery had set an example for other countries and institutions to follow in the restitution of stolen artworks to their countries of origin.

The Canberra gallery bought the "Seated Buddha" with assistance from gallery benefactor Roslyn Packer, widow of the late media tycoon Kerry Packer. Roslyn Packer also helped the gallery to buy an 800-year-old sculpture, the "Sacred Bull Nandi, Vehicle of Shiva," for A$655,000 from another New York art dealer, Carlton Rochell, in 2009. This sculpture's provenance is also under a cloud; Crennan's report described it as "problematic" and needing further research.

In a September 2014 statement to mark Abbott's return of the two statues to India, the Canberra gallery said it "would never knowingly purchase a stolen or looted item." It said the gallery had undertaken lengthy, comprehensive and independent research before it bought the Shiva Nataraja from Kapoor in 2008. "Despite these efforts, court proceedings may yet confirm that the gallery has been a victim of a most audacious fraud," said the then director of the gallery, Ron Radford. Radford retired the same month, after 10 years as director.

The search for the Hindu statues stolen from two temples in Tamil Nadu in 2006 and 2008 was aided by photographic evidence from the archives of the French Institute of Pondicherry. The institute, established in what was once the French colony of Pondicherry, about 200km south of Chennai, had a collection of photographs of items in various temples in the region. These were matched against catalogue pictures of items being offered for sale by Kapoor in New York. Kapoor's Art of the Past gallery manager Aaron Freedman pleaded guilty in the U.S. in December 2013 to one count of criminal conspiracy and five counts of possession of stolen property. He is now helping U.S. federal authorities with their inquiries. Another New York associate, Selina Mohamed, was charged in December 2013 with possession of stolen property. She subsequently pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of conspiracy and in March 2015 was given a one year conditional release.

The arrests were part of Operation Hidden Idol, run by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Homeland Security Investigations' cultural property unit, which focused on Kapoor's activities.

The Kapoor case evokes parallels with an art looting saga from the 1970s involving a temple north-east of Cambodia's famed Angkor complex. Between 2013 and 2015, six 10th century sandstone statues that were stolen from the Koh Ker temple during the Cambodian civil war were returned to Cambodia from the U.S. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York returned two of these statues in 2013 after it said new information had come to light that was not available when the statues were donated to the museum between 1987 and 1992.

In 2014, three items portraying characters from the Mahabharata, an epic Sanskrit poem of ancient India, were returned by the U.S., including a statue of Duryodhana that was first auctioned in London in 1975. The statue was due to be auctioned by Sotheby's in New York in March 2011 before action by Unesco, the United Nations cultural organization, stopped the sale on Cambodia's behalf.

Another statue, of the character Bhima, was returned by California's Norton Simon museum and a third, representing the character Pandava, was returned by Christie's auction house in 2014. Last year, the Cleveland Museum of Art said it would return a statue of Hanuman, a Hindu god, that it acquired in 1982.

Author: Geoff Hiscock | Source: Nikkei Asian Review [March 04, 2016]

The Antiquities Ministry announced Sunday it received an ancient Egyptian wall relief that was repatriated in October by Egypt’s embassy in London.

The painted limestone wall relief was delivered to the Egyptian embassy in London after its owner, who bought it from a British antiquities collector, learnt it had been  stolen and smuggled out of Egypt, Antiquities Minister Mamdouh al Damaty said in a statement Sunday.

The artifact dates back to the reign of the 19th Dynasty Pharaoh Seti I (1290 B.C. – 1279 B.C.) Damaty said, adding that it will be displayed at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

It measure approximately 43cm (17.2 inches) by 67 cm with carvings representing Pharaoh Seti I making offerings before Anubis, the mummification God and Hathor, ancient Egyptian motherhood Goddess, he added.

Originally located in an ancient Egyptian temple in Upper Egypt’s governorate of Asyut, the limestone relief was smuggled out of Egypt in 1970, the foreign ministry said in a statement last week.

Egypt’s political turmoil has led to a security lapse at archaeological sites and storerooms and museums nationwide, leaving Egypt’s treasures vulnerable to looting. The Egyptian museum and Malawi museum are among the sites that have been affected.

During the past four years, Egypt has recovered over 1,600 artifacts and is currently working on other cases in many European countries, Ministry of Antiquities Museums Sector head Ahmed Sharaf previously told The Cairo Post.

“It is impossible to provide an accurate number of the artifacts that have been stolen since the January 25 Revolution,” he said.

Author: Rany Mostafa | Source: The Cairo Post [December 13, 2015]

Islamic State fighters have looted and bulldozed the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, the Iraqi government said, in their latest assault on some of the world's greatest archaeological and cultural treasures.

A tribal source from the nearby city of Mosul told Reuters the radical Sunni Islamists, who dismiss Iraq's pre-Islamic heritage as idolatrous, had pillaged the 3,000-year-old site on the banks of the Tigris River.

The assault against Nimrud came just a week after the release of a video showing Islamic State forces smashing museum statues and carvings in Mosul, the city they seized along with much of northern Iraq last June.

"Daesh terrorist gangs continue to defy the will of the world and the feelings of humanity," Iraq's tourism and antiquities ministry said, referring to Islamic State by its Arabic acronym.

"In a new crime in their series of reckless offences they assaulted the ancient city of Nimrud and bulldozed it with heavy machinery, appropriating the archaeological attractions dating back 13 centuries BC," it said.

Nimrud, about 20 miles (30 km) south of Mosul, was built around 1250 BC. Four centuries later it became capital of the neo-Assyrian empire - at the time the most powerful state on Earth, extending to modern-day Egypt, Turkey and Iran.

Many of its most famous surviving monuments were removed years ago by archaeologists, including colossal Winged Bulls which are now in London's British Museum and hundreds of precious stones and pieces of gold which were moved to Baghdad.

But ruins of the ancient city remain at the northern Iraqi site, which has been excavated by a series of experts since the 19th century. British archaeologist Max Mallowan and his wife, crime writer Agatha Christie, worked at Nimrud in the 1950s.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was deeply disturbed by the destruction at Nimrud.

"This crude attempt to erase the heritage of an ancient civilization will ultimately fail. No terrorist can rewrite history," he said in a statement.

A local tribal source confirmed the attack had taken place.

"Islamic State members came to the Nimrud archaeological city and looted the valuables in it and then they proceeded to level the site to the ground," the source told Reuters.

"There used to be statues and walls as well as a castle that Islamic State has destroyed completely."

Archaeologists have compared the assault on Iraq's cultural history to the Taliban's destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas in 2001. But the damage wreaked by Islamic State, not just on ancient monuments but also on rival Muslim places of worship, has been swift, relentless and more wide-ranging.

Last week's video showed them toppling statues and carvings from plinths in the Mosul museum and smashing them with sledgehammers and drills. It also showed damage to a huge statue of a bull at the Nergal Gate into the city of Nineveh.

Archaeologists said it was hard to quantify the damage, because some items appeared to be replicas, but many priceless articles had been destroyed including artifacts from Hatra, a stunning pillared city in northern Iraq dating back 2,000 years.

Islamic State, which rules a self-declared caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria, promotes a fiercely purist interpretation of Sunni Islam which seeks its inspiration from early Islamic history. It rejects religious shrines of any sort and condemns Iraq's majority Shi'ite Muslims as heretics.

In July it destroyed the tomb of the prophet Jonah in Mosul. It has also attacked Shi'ite places of worship and last year gave Mosul's Christians an ultimatum to convert to Islam, pay a religious levy or face death by the sword. It has also targeted the Yazidi minority in the Sinjar mountains west of Mosul.

Author: Dominic Evans and Saif Hameed | Source: Reuters [March 06, 2015]

Palmyra may just have fallen yet again to the Islamic State group, but a new "immersive" 3D show in Paris lets you walk through the Syrian city's classical colonnades as they were before the jihadists blew them to bits.

The "Eternal Sites" exhibition uses high-definition images often shot by drones to allow the public to visit four of the most threatened heritage sites in the world in war-torn Syria and Iraq.

The eighth-century Umayyad Mosque in Damascus—regarded by many as the fourth holiest place in Islam—and the Krak des Chevaliers Crusader castle near the ravaged city of Homs have also been virtually recreated under the dome of the >Grand Palais in Paris.

The show, which has been organised with the nearby Louvre museum, is part of a global push to digitalise spectacular archaeological sites that are at risk.

The remains of the ancient Iraqi city of Khorsabad, which dates from the 7th century BC, has also been recreated using images captured by French company Iconem.

Like the other three sites, the 3D images are matched with real artefacts from the city from the Louvre's collections.

The museum's director Jean-Luc Martinez, who curated the show, said that they wanted to "show sites that are no longer accessible and the beauty of their art."

Palmyra fell for a second time to the jihadists at the weekend despite heavy Russian bombing to prevent the extremists entering the city.

Temples razed

Islamic State fighters ravaged the Roman-era ruins during the 10 months it held the ancient oasis city from May 2015 to March 2016, systematically blowing up temples and columns in attacks that provoked worldwide outrage.

Photogrammetric technology developed by Iconem has also been used to record the Roman theatre in the Syrian coastal city of Jableh and the Phoenician site in the ancient port of Ugarit, where evidence of the world's oldest alphabet was found.

Its technicians have also been working alongside 15 specialists from the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) to digitalise some of the country's major museum collections.

Hundreds of important heritage sites have been sacked or destroyed during the five-year conflict, with the destruction of the first-century temples of Bel and Baalshamin in Palmyra making most headlines.

IS has made a point of razing ancient shrines and statues it considers as idolatry and is also suspected of involvement in the illegal sale of antiquities.

Work on the "Syrian Heritage" database, the biggest 3D record of the country's monuments and treasures, began last December and includes a large number of Ottoman-era buildings in Damascus as well as its 11th-century citadel, which looms over the city.

The head of DGAM, Maamoun Abdulkarim, said the operation was essential to "avoid an irreplaceable loss to humanity" given "the dramatic situation in our country".

The drive, carried out with the help of the French grande ecole ENS and the research institute INRIA, is one of a number trying to catalogue sites in danger of falling into the line of fire.

The Institute for Digital Archaeology, created by Oxford and Harvard universities and Dubai's Museum of the Future, is also compiling a record of many vulnerable sites in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

It has handed out 5,000 low-cost 3D cameras to archaeologists and NGOs with the hope of gathering a million images of threatened sites.

A two-thirds scale replica of Palmyra's destroyed triumphal arch was unveiled in New York's Times Square and London's Trafalgar Square in April before being displayed in Dubai.

To participate in this encounter, download your >invitation here (website only in French)

Author: Antoine Froidefond | Source: AFP [December 13, 2016]

The Italian mafia is selling assault rifles to Islamic State leaders in Libya in return for looted archaeological treasures, according to an Italian newspaper.

The feared ‘Ndrangheta gangsters sell on the priceless artefacts to Russian and Asian collectors.

La Stampa reports that the Calabrian network, which dominates Europe’s drug trade, works with the Camorra in Naples to buy Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers smuggled out of Ukraine and Moldova by the Russian mafia.

The armaments are then traded in return for ancient Roman and Greek statues that Isis fighters have dug up illegally in Libya, which was a colony of the two ancient cultures. Isis has ruled over swathes of the country for months.

A journalist from La Stampa posed as a collector to be taken to a salami factory in southern Italy by a member of an ‘Ndrangheta clan from Lamezia in Calabria. For $87,000 he was offered the marble head of a Roman sculpture looted from Libya.

The Mafioso also showed photographs of a larger head from a Greek statue, for sale at $1.2 million.

Antiquities are brought from Libya to the Calabrian port of Gioia Tauro by Chinese-operated cargo ships, it is claimed. The treasures are sold on to collectors from Russia, China, Japan and the Gulf. After expanding into Libya, Isis has been pinned back by local militias. The jihadists, however, are believed to have tried to profit from trafficking in artefacts, as they have done in Iraq and Syria.

Libyan archaeologists working to protect the country’s five UNESCO-listed sites have received death threats.

Italian investigators have long suspected the mafia of selling guns to Isis. “In Naples, Islamic militias and the Camorra have been trading guns and drugs since the 1990s,” a veteran investigator said yesterday (Sunday).

The gangsters have also been involved in the wholesale looting of Etruscan Roman tombs in Italy. Trading guns for artefacts with Isis is a natural evolution of its business. The widespread excavation and selling of Greek and Roman treasures boomed in Libya after the death in 2011 of Colonel Gaddafi, well before the arrival of Isis.

A rare 4ft marble statue believed to have been dug up in the ancient city of Cyrene in 2011 and worth $3.2 million was found in a west London warehouse two years after the uprising.

Susan Kane, a Libyan expert at Oberlin College in Ohio, said: “There was a major land grab after the revolution and more earth has been moved since 2011 than in the preceding centuries. Antiquities are turning up and there is a great synergy between trafficking them, drugs and arms.”

Author: Tom Kington | Source: The Times [October 17, 2016]

The Hundred Years War might not be quite over just yet with an apparent Franco-British row brewing over Joan of Arc's gold-plated ring.

Just as the historic gold-plated ring was safely back in French hands it’s emerged that British authorities want it back.

The saga of Joan of Arc’s ring took a new twist on Sunday just as it was officially unveiled on its return to France.

The ring thought to belong toFrance's most famous historical martyr, Joan of Arc, was unveiled on Sunday at the Puy de Fou historical theme park in the western Vendee region.

Some 5,000 spectators turned out to see the unveiling of the ring, that the park had bought at a London auction for €376, 833 ($425,000).

"It's a little bit of France that has returned. The ring has come back to France and will stay here," said Philippe de Villiers, the founder of Puy de Fou told the crowd.

The ring had thought to have been in Britain for over six centuries and de Villiers told spectators that there was “a new twist” in the story of the ring.

“The British government has sent our lawyer an unprecedented demand: the return of the ring to London,” de Villers told the shocked crowd.

“We are told that the National Arts Council considers this ring part of those objects with, and I quote ‘high national symbolic value’ and as such should have part of a special legislation.”

According to the demand, on purchasing the ring the Puy de Fou park should have obtained a special export license necessary under European regulations.

De Villiers said that they had checked the rules and claimed they only apply if the object is taken out of the European Union.

He then mocked the British and the potential of a Brexit fro the EU by telling the crowd: “It is not at all our intention to have a Puy de Fou exit.

He then sent a defiant message to the British government.

“Ladies and gentlemen from Britain, if you want to see the ring, then come to the Puy de Fou. For the rest it’s too late,” he said.

Joan of Arc, who fought against the English occupation of France during the Hundred Years' War, was burned alive at the stake but became a symbol of French resistance and was later made a saint by the Catholic Church.

The official unveiling saw the ring carried on a cushion in a wooden ark, with its own honour guard and a military procession.

The gold-plated silver ring was dated to the 15th century by an Oxford laboratory, but the trove of historical documents that came with it have yet to prove it belonged to the famous French martyr.

"They are only at the start of the exploration. It's a lot of work but a beautiful adventure," said expert Vanessa Soupault, who saw the ring recently.

The bulky piece of jewellery features three engraved crosses and the inscription "JHS-MAR", signifying "Jesus-Maria".

That fits a description recorded at Joan of Arc's trial in 1431, where she told the court the ring had been given by her parents.

Puy du Fou says the ring was probably enlarged and modified at some point in the last 200 years.

However the difficulty of tracing the ring's path through the centuries has left many historians sceptical.

Part of the problem is the number of copies in circulation. There was even a tombola in the early 20th century in which prizes included versions of the ring.

"Around Joan of Arc, we already have several cases of false objects," said Olivier Bouzy, head of the Joan of Arc archives in the north-central French town of Orleans

Source: The Local [April 15, 2016]

As armed groups in Syria and Iraq destroy priceless archaeological sites, European authorities and dealers are on high alert for smaller, looted artefacts put on sale to help finance the jihadists' war.

Stolen-art expert Chris Marinello, director of Art Recovery International, said he has been shown photographs of items being offered from Syria that were "clearly looted right out of the ground".

"You could still see dirt on some of these objects," he told AFP.

They included cylinder seals, Roman bottles and vases, although Marinello said it was unclear whether the items were still in Syria, were in transit or had arrived in the key markets of Europe and the United States.

Concerns about looting during the Syrian war have increased following the advance of the Islamic State group through parts of Syria and Iraq, and recent propaganda videos showing their destruction of ancient sites such as Nimrud.

The UN Security Council in February demanded UN states act to stop the trade in cultural property from those two countries, amid warnings that they represented a significant source of funding for the militant group.

Experts say it is impossible to put a value on antiquities looted from Syria, which has been home to many civilisations through the millennia, from the Canaanites to the Ottomans.

The London-based International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art (IADAA) estimates the entire legitimate antiquities market in 2013 was worth between 150 and 200 million euros ($160-215 million).

Marinello said reputable dealers are "being very careful not to touch anything that could remotely be part of this recent wave of looting".

But Hermann Parzinger, an archaeologist and president of the Germany-based Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, said there was an "enormous market" from private buyers.

He warned that the cultural costs were huge, telling AFP: "The context which is so important to reconstruct the history of these civilisations is completely destroyed."    

Italy has proposed that world heritage body UNESCO create a military taskforce to protect cultural sites in war zones, but many experts believe little can be done to stop the current destruction.

Instead, they are forced to wait until the conflict ends and watch in horror as priceless historic sites are destroyed and the spoils gradually emerge onto the market.

Vernon Rapley, a former head of the art and antiquities squad at London's Metropolitan Police, expects many Syrian items to be held back to avoid flooding the market, as occurred after the US-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The looted artefacts were likely to be "hauled up in warehouses either in the country or near the country, and only linked to the art trade in small pieces and at a later stage", he told AFP.

Stephane Thefo, who leads an Interpol unit dedicated to fighting the illegal trafficking of cultural goods, agreed that many items may disappear for years -- but insisted that tackling the trade was the best way to combat looting.

The French policeman would like to see tougher national laws on trafficking of cultural goods, something Germany is currently considering.

"We have to act by seeking to narrow markets for the illicit trade, hoping that by curbing the demand, the supply would eventually decrease," Thefo said.

Identifying looted objects is no easy task, however, not least because cultural crime is rarely a police priority.

The law puts the onus on the authorities to prove an item is illegal and a long delay in an artefact being sold, or multiple owners, make it hard to establish provenance.

At a conference at the V&A museum in London this week on the destruction of cultural property in conflict areas in Iraq and Syria, Mali, Libya and Yemen, archaeologists stressed the need for proper inventories of heritage sites.

They noted that objects that have been photographed and digitally catalogued are more likely to be recovered.

Interpol is currently building a database of stolen objects, and James Ede, a London dealer and IADAA board member, urged cultural bodies to share their information with dealers.

"This material will necessarily surface on the open market sooner or later. The challenge therefore is to identify it and where possible to return it when it is safe to do so," he said.

Author: Alice Ritchie | Source: AFP [April 17, 2015]

3D reconstructions of some of Syria's most spectacular archaeological sites go online Tuesday after a big push to digitalise the war-torn country's threatened heritage.

French digital surveyors have been working with Syrian archaeologists to map some of the country's most famous monuments after Islamic State jihadists sparked international outrage by blowing up two temples in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Palmyra last year.

The eighth-century Umayyad Mosque in the capital Damascus—regarded by some as the fourth holiest place in Islam—and the Krak des Chevaliers Crusader castle near the ravaged city of Homs are the two most famous buildings to have been scanned in minute detail.

Photogrammetric technology developed by the French start-up Iconem has also been used to record the Roman theatre in the coastal city of Jableh and the Phoenician site in the ancient port of Ugarit, where evidence of the world's oldest alphabet was found.

Its technicians have also been working alongside 15 specialists from the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) to digitalise some of the country's major museum collections.

Hundreds of important heritage sites have been sacked or destroyed during the five-year conflict, with the destruction of the first-century temples of Bel and Baalshamin in the ancient desert city of Palmyra causing a global outcry.

The Islamic State group has made a point of razing ancient shrines and statues it considers as idolatry and is also suspected of involvement in the illegal sale of antiquities.

Work on the "Syrian Heritage" database, the biggest 3D record of the country's monuments and treasures, began in December and includes a large number of Ottoman-era buildings in Damascus as well as its 11th-century citadel, which looms over the city.

The head of DGAM, Maamoun Abdulkarim, said the operation was essential to "avoid an irreplacable loss to humanity" given "the dramatic situation in our country".

"This solution gives our archaeological sites a real hope of renaissance and allows the memory of them to be preserved, no matter what happens," he added in a statement.

The drive, carried out with the help of the French grande ecole ENS and the research institute INRIA, is one of a number trying to catalogue sites in danger of falling into the line of fire.

The Institute for Digital Archaeology, created by Oxford and Harvard universities and Dubai's Museum of the Future, is also compiling a record of many vulnerable sites in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

It has handed out 5,000 low-cost 3D cameras to archaeologists and NGOs with the hope of gathering a million images of threatened sites.

The Million Images Database hopes be fully online by the end of the year and will display life-size replicas of Palmyra's destroyed triumphal arch in New York's Times Square and London's Trafalgar Square in April.

The replicas of the arch, blown up by IS jihadists in October, are being made with the world's largest 3D printer.

France's culture minister had earlier floated the idea of a 3D recreation of the ancient city, known as the "Pearl of the Desert", based on photos taken by tourists over the years.

Author: Laurence Benhamou | Source: AFP [March 14, 2016]

The following is an open letter circulated yesterday (May 14) by Alexis Mantheakis, Chairman of the International Parthenon Sculptures Action Committee, on the recent developments in the Parthenon Sculptures issue:

Dear All,

The recent snub by the British government to UNESCO's offer to mediate in the issue of the Parthenon Sculptures dispute and the arrogant wording directed at the Greek government's often repeated offer to negotiate the matter by discussion confirmed our position that Britain never had the intention to enter into good faith discussions. As we had said in recent fora,  the only road we saw to possible success was one of legal action, with a direct and dynamic confrontation with Whitehall.

The recent response by Britain dissolved any illusions we had regarding the powers in the UK to be brought to do the right thing,  and to right a historical wrong.  We too had hoped that Britain would succumb to worldwide public opinion to correct an outrage,  the stripping and vandalising of the Parthenon of 60% of its famous millenia-old  Sculptures ,  a crime committed when Greeks were under occupation and unable to defend their archaeological heritage and national symbols of identity.

The latest declaration by the new minister of culture in the UK continues with the hard line of his predeccesors, namely that "The marbles were legally acquired according to the laws of the time. " So Mr Minister were 3 million African slaves, captured,  transported and sold,  "according to the laws of the time." Opium too was purchased and sold, in tons "according to the laws of the time". Those who did not agree to buy your opium had two wars declared on them,  and so China paid with the loss of Hong Kong and a treaty to buy your Indian grown opium.  This, Mr Minister, is NOT that time.  We are disputing your CURRENT possession of symbols of our heritage, removed from Athens and held by you in a totally government financed and controlled museum institution (all the board is appointed directly, or indirectly by the UK government or by the Queen).

This,  though,  is not the issue.

One more British government acting like  an infant  petulantly hugging another child's toy,  saying "It is mine, mine!"  is understandable,  because there is no home-made item that can compare in beauty,  artisanry,  historic or other value to those created  by a superior ancient civilisation.  We may understand the feeling,  and commiserate,  but that does not justify the possession of the looted Greek scultures taken from the Parthenon.  There is no justification for it.  We sympathise with the situation the British Museum is in,  but our sympathy doesn't extend to giving up iconic and defitive items of our heritage,  nor did our illustrious and talented predecessors in Ancient Athens build the Parthenon to have its facade torn off and damaged  by a British ambassador to decorate his Scottish residence. The Parthenon was built by Pericles and the Greek city states to commemorate the victory of Greek civilisation against the very type of barbarity  and lack of respect that Elgin indulged in 2300 years later.

The British position is well known and is in keeping with how official Britain has acted in the last few centuries.  To win in a contest the basic rule MUST be to understand your opponent and create your game strategy around this knowledge.

Anyone who has studied British history and politics will know that Britain NEVER,  but NEVER,  gives anything back unless forced to do so.  India, Cyprus,  as well as dozens of colonies of the Empire,  and other possessions acquired without the consent of the people, often with great bloodshed caused by British troops were only given back by Britain after a bitterly contested conflict,  on the field of battle,  in courts,  or with a series of extended non-violent political actions by those who had lost their heritage,  freedoms,  or historical archaeological treasures.  Britain today in its museums and in the Tower of London still holds numerous purloined and pillaged items as well as those taken by reason of  military superiority from a vanquished foe defending himself on his own soil.  The Kohinoor Diamond in the so called Crown Jewels  taken from a defeated 15 year old prince in India, is but one example. Manifest Destiny demanded it.  We oppose this way of thinking.

This lengthy introduction,  and I will apologise,  was to emphasise my conviction that dialogue for the return of the Parthenon Marbles, after so many valiant and polite efforts by Greece,  and its overseas friends in all walks of life,  is not a viable option,  and only  incurable romantics or people without an understanding of the official British character and its limitations can insist that this dead end is the road to the Restitution in Athens.

The problem is not the obduracy and intransigence of British officialdom.  It is a given, and we have to act  with that in mind.  It is with the very knowledge of the historic failure of Greek diplomacy,  both cultural and political,  and that of our own self-financed voluntary Parthenon organisations, to bring about the return, that it was encouraging when the Greek government,  that for 40 years has not asked Britain officially for the Sculptures return,  not long ago decided to involve an experienced and prestigious British legal firm Doughty Street Chambers led by George Robertson QC,  to represent our interests and to write a report regarding  what options were open for Greece to act.

Overall public awareness of the issue and additional sympathy for the Greek case was given very welcome boosts,  human nature being what it is,  by declarations of public support by celebrities such as George Clooney,  Matt Damon and others,  while a visit to Greece by Mrs Clooney with her senior colleagues at the UK law office created a media frenzy and a heightening of public interest in the Parthenon issue.  The Doughty Chambers law group produced a 140 page confidential report for the Greek government describing,  as leaked to the press,  5 options.  The one considered to have the highest chance of success was,  and this is no surprise to us,  for Greece to go immediately to the  European Court of Human Rights where,  according to the report,  there was  the greatest chance of a Greek legal victory.  The lawyers were specific: it is  now or never,  if the opportunity is  not to be lost with issues such as statutes of limitations in the near future killing Greek chances of recovery of the items through international court decisions.

In Greece,  as we all know there is a new government,  and the report was delivered to them.  With the understanding of the British penchant for intransigence,  fortified by the recent snub to UNESCO, and the history of failed attempts,  the new minister had a detailed road map in his hands,  to move forward,  with of course the support of millions around the world and at home.  Expecting his decision to do this,  using the British law firm and their international expertise and experience in cross border cultural issues we were stunned to hear the announcement of Under Minister Mr Nickos Xidakis,  a former journalist,  who announced,  in more words than these,  that " We will not go against Britain in court... This is a matter to be settled politically and diplomatically...this issue will be settled, bit by bit over, time..."

Looking at what the minister said let us examine the  viability of his declared course of action over that which the British lawyers and we ourselves at IPSACI believe,  and we all want the same thing ,  the return of the Parthenon Sculptures.

A) Mr Xidakis rejects the expert opinion of the British legal experts.  Claiming we may lose in court.  But for 200 years we have lost! We can only win,  or if we lose here, we can initiate a new legal action in another court.

B) Mr Xidakis says the issue can be won diplomatically.  The question is,  after 200 years of failed  diplomatic initiatives, is the government of Mr Xidakis in such a powerful international position to impose a solution using diplomacy? Does he know of Greek diplomats who can force Mr Cameron to sign a new law allowing/directing the Return of the Parthenon Sculptures?

C) Mr Xidakis told the press that the issue should be dealt with "politically" .  This is indeed one way countries settle disputes.  The assumption by lay persons like myself,  on hearing the Minister,  is that Greece at this moment has the political clout to bring the British Museum to its knees and to force Mr Cameron to sign the document of repatriation of the Sculptures to Athens. With all our goodwill towards Mr Xidakis, where does he draw this feeling of current Greek political power and superiority over Britain from?

D) Finally the minister says that this issue is being slowly resolved, "little by little".

But it has already been 200 years from the stripping of the friezes and metopes and Britain has not moved one centimetre in the direction Greece demands!

If the minister does not tell us why he feels his/our  government has the diplomatic and political power to solve the issue,  I very much fear that his position looks like a hot potato shifting of the issue to a future government because of  reluctance to take the bull by the horns,  as recommended by the UK lawyers, and get into court with his British counterpart.(Apologies for the mixed metaphors!)

I have a great fear that we are about to lose the Parthenon Sculptures for ever, and that the work of all our organisations, ministries,  diplomatic missions,  our volunteer supporters, and decades of dedicated work by people such as yourselves around the world, and in Greek and international  organisations are about to be lost down the drain.

I therefore beg those who believe that we must recommend to Minister Xidakis and his staff to listen to the recommendations of people and experts who know the issues well,  and understand the mindset of those walking the halls of Russell Square and Westmister,  to express their concern to the authorities in Greece.

Thank you for your patience in reading this long analysis of where I believe  we are today,  in view of the recent, and disturbing developments.

Best to all,
Alexis Mantheakis
Chairman of the International Parthenon Sculptures Action Committee Inc.
Athens office.
www.ipsaci.com
+(30)22990 47566

The Greek government has finally acknowledged that the British Museum is the lawful owner of the “Elgin Marbles”. That, at least, is the logical conclusion of the recent news that Greece has dropped its legal claim to the Parthenon Sculptures.

The surprise announcement came only 48 hours after Amal Clooney and the team at London’s Doughty Street Chambers sent the Greek government a 150-page report admitting that there was only a 15% chance of their success in a British court, and that Greece should consider pursuing the claim at the International Court of Justice. However, quite understandably, the Greek government has decided that what Clooney is really saying is that they have no case.

The Syriza government is keenly aware that British courts are recognized the world over for their experience in resolving international disputes, including those involving British interests and institutions. So, quite reasonably, the new Greek government has concluded that an international court will probably not reach a different conclusion. Nikos Xydakis, culture minister, has therefore announced that Greece will drop its legal claim and pursue “diplomatic and political” avenues instead.

This is unsurprising, as — contrary to the widespread misconception — there was nothing illegal about the way in which Lord Elgin saved the Parthenon Sculptures from acute ongoing destruction. The mauling had started when the Greek church smashed up a large number of the ancient temple’s carvings in the fifth century. The Venetians then blew up chunks of the building in 1687. And in the 1800s, when Lord Elgin arrived in Athens, the occupying Ottomans were grinding the sculptures up for limestone and using them for artillery target practice.

Elgin had intended to commission casts and paintings of the sculptures, but when he saw firsthand the ongoing damage (about 40% of the original sculptures had been pulverised), he acquired an export permit from the Ottoman authorities in Athens, and brought as many as he could back to safety in Britain. It was a personal disaster which bankrupted him, but it has meant that, since 1816, the British Museum has been able to share with its visitors some of the best-preserved Parthenon Sculptures in the world.

What is usually missing in the emotion of the Elgin Marbles debate is that the British Museum is a universal museum, which tells the story of humanity’s cultural achievements from the dawn of time. In this, the work of the Ancient Greek department is world leading, and part of a network of museum classicists — including those from the New Acropolis Museum in Athens — who work together collaboratively, sharing their knowledge and passion for the classical world with the widest possible public.

Coincidentally, the British Museum (the nation’s largest tourist attraction) is currently hosting a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition of Greek sculpture, drawing on its own collection and generous loans from other museums all over the world to showcase the evolution of ancient Greek ideas about beauty and the human body. In this breathtaking visual story of the march of classical ideas about aesthetics, the Parthenon Sculptures take their place, contributing eloquently to the state of sculpture in the golden age of Athenian carving under Pheidias.

The overarching misconception we need to get over is that museum objects belong uniquely to the country in which they were created. If that was so, the world should empty out its leading museums of the foreign artefacts they have purchased or been donated. Athens would be no exception in this, and would be required to return their extensive collections of Egyptian, Chinese, Islamic, and South American art.

Of course, it is an absurd idea. The world is manifestly enhanced by museums and their depth of specialised knowledge. They are, above all, educational places that enrich us all. The fact that half the surviving sculptures from the Parthenon can be seen in Athens, with the remaining half split between London, Berlin, Munich, Würzburg, Copenhagen, the Vatican, and — thanks to the British Museum — the Hermitage in St Petersburg earlier this year, ensures that the widest possible audience is able to experience for themselves the unique and bewitching ability of fifth-century Athenians to convert rough stone into warm, living flesh.

Another page has turned definitively in the story of the Parthenon Sculptures. The idea that Lord Elgin or Parliament did something illegal has finally been dropped, and not before time. Now the debate can proceed in a less antagonistic manner, and everyone can acknowledge that it is a question of politics, not looted artefacts.

As the world has recently discovered from the tragic destruction of Assyrian art at Nimrud, Mosul, and elsewhere in the Middle East, the planet’s heritage does not last unless someone looks after it. And so far, in the case of the Parthenon Sculptures (and indeed its holdings of Assyrian sculpture), the British Museum continues to do the world an enormous service

Author: Dominic Selwood | Source: The Telegraph [May 14, 2015]

Diplomacy rather than litigation will help Greece win its claim for the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum, Alternate Minister for Culture Nikos Xydakis said in an interview on Wednesday.

“On the one hand, you can’t file a suit over any issue, and, on the other, the outcome in international courts is never certain,” Xydakis said.

“The way to winning back the Marbles is diplomatic and political,” he said in response to a report by the British firm of cultural heritage lawyers Norman Palmer and Geoffrey Robertson, urging Greece to take swift legal recourse.

Source: Kathimerini [May 13, 2015]

At a sprawling Bronze Age cemetery in southern Jordan, archaeologists have developed a unique way of peering into the murky world of antiquities looting: With aerial photographs taken by a homemade drone, researchers are mapping exactly where - and roughly when - these ancient tombs were robbed.

Based on such images and conversations with some looters whose confidence they gained, archaeologists try to follow the trail of stolen pots and other artifacts to traders and buyers. They hope to get a better understanding of the black market and perhaps stop future plunder.

It's sophisticated detective work that stretches from the site, not far from the famed Dead Sea in Jordan, to collectors and buyers the world over.

The aerial photography detects spots where new looting has taken place at the 5,000-year-old Fifa graveyard, which can then sometimes be linked to Bronze Age pots turning up in shops of dealers, said Morag Kersel, an archaeologist at DePaul University in Chicago. Kersel, who heads the "Follow The Pots" project, also shares the data with Jordan's Department of Antiquities, to combat looting.

On a recent morning, team members walked across ravaged graves, their boots crunching ancient bones, as a tiny, six-bladed flying robot buzzed overhead. In recent years, drone use in archaeology has become increasingly common, replacing blimps, kites and balloons in surveying hard-to-access dig sites, experts said.

Chad Hill, an archaeologist at the University of Connecticut who built the drone, piloted it over a part of the graveyard that had not been mapped yet. The drone snapped photographs that allowed Hill to see in great detail how looting altered the landscape.

"We can see the change through time, not just of `a huge pit has been dug' but where different stones have moved," Hill said. "It's a level of resolution of spatial data collection that's never really been possible until the last couple of years."

As the drone's batteries ran low, Hill overrode the automatic pilot and guided the landing with a remote control. Flipping the drone on its back, he checked the camera, nodding approvingly at the afternoon's work.

The cemetery in Jordan's Dead Sea plain contains about 10,000 graves, part of the vast archaeological heritage of the region.

It looks like a moonscape as a result of looting, with about 3,700 craters stretching to the horizon and strewn with shards of skeletons and broken ceramics. Looters typically leave human remains and take only well preserved artifacts.

"I spend my days stepping on dead people," said Kersel, picking up a broken shell bracelet, presumably from ancient Egypt.

An underlying cause for looting is high unemployment, said Muhammed al-Zahran, director of the nearby Dead Sea Museum. "Looting happens all across the region," he said.

In Jordan, unemployment is 12 percent, and it's twice as high among the young.

Yet stolen antiquities rarely enrich local looters, said Neil Brodie, a researcher at the University of Glasgow's Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research.

Rather, the profits end up in Europe or America, Brodie said, describing high markups as the artifacts move from looter to middleman, dealer and then customer.

Brodie studied looting at another site in Jordan, the ruins of the early Bronze Age community of Bab adh-Dhra, though without the help of drones.

He estimated that diggers were paid about $10,500 for 28,084 pots that were subsequently sold in London for over $5 million, sometimes marketed as "Old Testament" artifacts.

An artifact that later sold for $275,000 was initially traded for a pig, Brodie's research showed. And he also found that a dancing Hindu deity bought for about $18 sold eventually for $372,000.

Some of the artifacts stolen from Jordan's sites, including tombstones, end up in neighboring Israel, said Eitan Klein, a deputy at the Israeli Antiquities Authority's robbery unit.

Kersel, from the "Follow the Pots" project, said looters told her they sell their goods to middlemen from the Jordanian capital of Amman or the southern town of Karak. She said the trail stops with the shadowy middlemen, but that she can sometimes pick it up on the other end, by comparing the looting timeline with what eventually ends up on the market all across the world.

In addition to monitoring the cemetery, Kersel also teaches local workshops on profiting from antiquities legally, including by making and selling replicas, to discourage robbing graves.

Yet, looting will be difficult to stop as long as demand remains high, she said.

"People don't ask the sticky questions about where artifacts come from," said Kersel, standing inside a robbed grave in Fifa. "They just want to own the piece regardless of what kind of background the artifact has, and that is what causes people on the ground to loot."

Author: Sam McNeil | Source: The Associated Press [April 03, 2015]