Prak Sunnara, director-general of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts’ heritage department, confirmed Sunday that the statue was set to arrive last night at the Phnom Penh International Airport.

“The statue will arrive at 8:30 tonight and this statue was made in the 10th-century Koh Ker style,” he said. “It has been returned from the U.S.”

He declined to comment further, noting that an official press conference about the statue would be held at the Council of Ministers on Tuesday.

According to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s website, the 10th-century sandstone sculpture stands about 116 cm tall and 54 cm wide and depicts the god in a crouching position, with the body of a man and head of a monkey.

Anne Lemaistre, head of the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO in Cambodia, said it was clear the statue had originally been attached to a base, but it wasn’t until archaeologists unearthed previously undiscovered pedestals in the Koh Ker complex’s Prasat Chen temple last year that the statue’s exact location was determined.

“I think the proof has been established that it is coming from that place, because it was a matter of matching the pedestal with the sculpture,” Ms. Lemaistre said, referring to Prasat Chen.

“UNESCO is extremely satisfied and very grateful to the Cleveland museum for accepting to give it back,” she added.

Kong Vireak, director of the National Museum in Phnom Penh, said the statue would be handed over on Monday to the museum, where it will be displayed.

In May last year, Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer newspaper reported that Sonya Rhie Quintanilla, the Cleveland museum’s curator of Indian and Southeast Asian art, traveled to Cambodia several months earlier to attempt to determine whether the statue came from Prasat Chen.

“Our work on the piece and its provenance is still underway, and terribly time-consuming, but so far, based on my extensive fieldwork in Cambodia earlier this year, I can report that I did not find any physical evidence to confirm that the Cleveland Hanuman is from Prasat Chen,” the newspaper quoted Ms. Quintanilla as saying at the time.

Neither Ms. Quintanilla nor Caroline Guscott, the museum’s spokeswoman, immediately responded to requests for comment.

Ms. Lemaistre of UNESCO said that while she did not know what had motivated the museum to give back the statue, it would have been premature to ask for its return before the additional pedestals in the temple were discovered last year.

“I think we could not have really asked without having established the evidence,” she said.

Authors: Mech Dara and Chris Mueller | Source: The Cambodia Daily [May 11, 2015]

The Association for the Protection of Syrian Archaeology said the museum "suffered serious damage caused by two explosive-packed barrels dropped Monday by Syrian army helicopters."

The non-governmental organization published pictures of the museum, located in an ancient Ottoman caravanserai, showing entire walls once covered with mosaics collapsed into rubble.

It said that several mosaic panels had been damaged in the eastern portico of the museum, including at least two that were knocked off their display by the force of the blast.

Other pieces were damaged by shrapnel and the pictures published by APSA on its website showed large holes gouged into an oval mosaic with a zig-zag pattern.

The museum building and surrounding complex, including a historic mosque, were also badly damaged, according to the APSA, with pictures showing several pillars destroyed and sections of roof that had caved in.

Reached by phone in Damascus Saturday, the head of Syria's antiquities, Maamoun Abdulkarim, acknowledged the damage at the museum, but declined to say who was responsible.

This is "a new tragedy for Syrian heritage," said Abdulkarim and called for the country's museums to be "neutral zones" in the war.

"No one, from any side, should harm that which forms our country's history," he said.

The United Nations last year warned that nearly 300 sites of incalculable value for Syria and human history have been destroyed, damaged or looted in the country's conflict.

The warning, based on satellite imagery, followed repeated statements of concern from archaeologists and other experts about the damage being done to Syria's historic sites and the rise in looting of antiquities.

More than 230,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government demonstrations before spiraling into a war after a regime crackdown.

Source: AFP [June 20, 2015]

Şanlıurfa Museum Director Müslüm Ercan said the Şanlıurfa Museum Complex, which opened last month, was home to many precious artifacts. “One of these artifacts is this mosaic,” he added.

He noted that the mythological poet Orpheus’ mosaic was believed to have been created in 194 A.D., and that it was being displayed in a special area in the museum.

In the mythological story, Orpheus goes to Hades to ask for his wife, Eurydice, after she received a fatal bite from a viper. Skilled at the lyre, Orpheus softened the heart of Hades, who gave him permission to take back Eurydice to the world above, provided that he not look back at her until both had exited the underworld.

Orpheus, however, looked back at his wife after he had exited the land of the dead, but before she had also crossed the threshold into the world above. As punishment, Eurydice was immediately taken back into the underworld, this time forever.

“A source of inspiration for many philosophical schools, Orpheus is a figure that decorates the ground of many rock tombs since it is related to the underworld and death. In our mosaics, Orpheus calms wild animals with his lyre and all of the animals gather to listen to his music,” Ercan said.

Found at Dallas Museum of Art

Ercan said they had made attempts to repatriate the mosaic when they discovered that it was on display at the Dallas Museum of Art. “The Culture and Tourism Ministry sent a letter to our museum to examine the issue. Its style was exactly the same as the Şanlıurfa region’s typical Syriac mosaics. With the detailed work of the ministry, the chief public prosecutor’s office and the museum, the mosaic was returned from the U.S. in 2012.”

After returning from the U.S., the mosaic was put on display at the Istanbul Archaeology Museum for nearly a year before being returned to Şanlıurfa.

The Mosaic of Orpheus, dated to A.D. 194, is known as the earliest Edessa – the Hellenistic name for Şanlıurfa – mosaic that archaeologists have yet dated. The mosaic was taken abroad by smugglers after its discovery by J.B. Segal in 1950 in Şanlıurfa.

Source: Hurriyet Daily News [June 10, 2015]

Hirshhorn Museum (Washington)

Hirshhorn Museum soon will cardinally change appearance, and without especial and cardinal changes. The New York architects from bureau Diller Scofidio + Renfro will add an existing complex with two easy structures in the form of blue spheres which will allow a museum to open additional spaces during a season. The sphere on a roof precisely reminds eggs on a museum of El Salvador of the Distance.

The Unusual Museum in Washington

In one of spheres the audience on 1,000 visual places will take places. Through transparent walls of a sphere spectators can enjoy not only a show, but also possibility to peep for the visitors of a museum walking on galleries. In the friend, a smaller sphere on the size there will be a cafe.

Estimated cost of realization of 5 million dollars, now the project is in a stage of study of the concept. Under plans, pavilions will open in 2011 year. However, if statements Fine Arts Commission) be required and National Capital Planning Commission, realization will be postponed for couple of years.

VIA «Temporary Pavilion For the Hirshhorn Museum»

But four years after the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak and nearly ended his own career, Zahi Hawass can be found in a cramped Cairo office, lamenting the state of the antiquities bureaucracy he once ruled like a pharaoh and dreaming of a new museum whose fate lies in limbo.

His trademark wide-brimmed hat and safari vest may be hung up for now, but he is brimming with ideas on how to revive Egypt's antiquities and bring back tourists after years of unrest.

A long-planned new facility out by the pyramids, called the Grand Egyptian Museum, was intended to open this year, but the government says it is short the one billion dollars needed to complete the project.

"Government routine cannot work for museums," Hawass said in an interview in his office, asserting that state bureaucracy is one of the main reasons the current Egyptian Museum has fallen into disrepair. For the new museum, "the directorship, the curatorship, it can be from America, from Germany, from England, from any place in the world. You need this museum to be international."

He also says private, international sponsorship is needed.

"If you pay $10,000, I put your name, written on the wall of the museum. If you pay $100,000, I put your name on the facade of the museum. If you build a whole gallery, I will name (the gallery after you)," he said, adding that the government should announce that Egyptian monuments belong to the entire world, not just Egyptians.

As to the challenge of moving artifacts from the current museum in downtown Cairo over bumpy roads to the site of the new facility on the city's outskirts, Hawass says "any TV channel" would pick up the tab in return for exclusive rights to document the artifacts' restoration and transport. "They will run in competition to do this," he said.

Hawass knows TV. He was once a staple on the Discovery Channel and had his own reality show on the History Channel called "Chasing Mummies," the promo for which introduced him by saying "100,000 years of history belong to one man... Only he holds the key to the world's greatest ruins."

The productions earned him droves of fans abroad but led to accusations of grandstanding in Egypt, where he was seen by many as a self-promoter who mistreated subordinates and abused his position for personal gain. He lost his job as head of antiquities after the 2011 uprising and faced corruption charges, of which he was later cleared.

But his swashbuckling antics gave a boost to Egyptian archaeology, with fundraising efforts and international tours of King Tut artifacts generating tens of millions of dollars.

His name is still associated with many of Egypt's most famous digs, including grand discoveries such as the Valley of the Golden Mummies in Bahariya Oasis in 1999 and the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut almost a decade later. He has long campaigned to bring home ancient artifacts spirited out of Egypt during colonial times, and once said he had managed to recover 5,000 pieces.

Zahi was an outspoken supporter of his longtime patron Mubarak, and has praised President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who led the military overthrow of an Islamist president in 2013 and was elected last year. But that support has not translated into an official role other than promotional work for tourism in Egypt.

When asked about the state of antiquities today, Hawass says things have improved over the last year, carefully avoiding direct criticism of anyone in particular. But he points out that there is still theft, mismanagement and corruption - noting two incidents in recent months in which artifacts were found to have been replaced with replicas.

"This did not happen before," he said, adding that in order to prevent such abuses, "we need to restore the people before we restore antiquities," by boosting employees' salaries and providing them with health insurance.

Hawass insisted during the interview that he is focused on writing and has no desire to return to his previous position as head of the country's antiquities. "People come here every day and ask me to come back... I think I did my duty, and it's time for me now to publish all that I discovered."

But at the glitzy launch of his latest book earlier this month at a ceremony at a five-star hotel attended by hundreds of Cairo's elite, he was less guarded about possible ambitions to return.

"Maybe," he said, as a torrent of fans pressed to take photos next to him.

Author: Brian Rohan | Source: The Associated Press [June 30, 2015]

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]

"It is a great cultural site, which attracts a lot of tourists and spreads awareness of the Egyptian civilisation and archaeology, in addition to boosting the economy," he added.

During the opening of the first International Tutankhamun Conference organized by the Grand Egyptian Museum, the minister said that the Grand Museum will feature up to 100,000 different artifacts, displayed in 15 showrooms, including a special hall for Tutankhamun's belongings.

The museum will be partially opened in May 2018, said the minister.

The conference, focused on one of the greatest archaeological treasures in the whole world, will be held annually in May.

Source: Egypt Independent [May 13, 2015]

Following the conversion of two Hagia Sophia into museums, which were initially built as churches and then turned into mosques and, subsequently, museums, the third Hagia Sophia in Edirne’s Enez district will be reconverted into a mosque, according to Foundations General Director Adnan Ertem, despite previous debates on turning it into a museum after reconstruction.

Speaking to state-run Anadolu Agency, Ertem said the Edirne Culture Assets Protection Regional Board approved the reconstruction project of the structure, which he called a “mosque” during the interview.

Ertem said the project would start as soon as possible, adding that the Hagia Sophia has been taken into the Foundations General Directorate’s investment program.

Explaining why it should be re-opened as a mosque, Erdem said the building was a “sanctuary that was consecrated as a mosque.”

“It is a foundation that can be put into service in line with its foundational charter. Thus its function will be preserved,” said Ertem.

Enez’s Hagia Sophia is located inside the ancient city of Ainos and although there are no records, it is thought to date back to the 12th century. It is located along the border with Greece and stationed on top of a hill seen from all around.

The district governor of Enez, Fatih Baysal, said in 2012 the usage of the structure as a mosque or not was a matter to be decided after the renovation.

“But even if it is used as a museum or a mosque, this place really needs to be [opened],” said Baysal.

Enez Mayor Abdullah Bostancı said the structure would have similar properties to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

The main Hagia Sophia, which has been a museum since 1935, was built in the fourth century and converted into a mosque, when Mehmet the Conqueror took Istanbul in 1453.

The Hagia Sophia in Turkey’s western district of İznik, which was initially constructed as a church in the eighth century and turned into a mosque when the city was conquered by the Ottomans in the 14th century, became a museum in the Turkish Republic. The building was later converted into a mosque in November 2011.

Another Hagia Sophia church, located in the Black Sea province of Trabzon, had been a mosque for many years after the conquest of the city and registered as a mosque in its land title. It was then turned into a museum and transferred to the Culture and Tourism Ministry. It was retransferred to the Trabzon Regional Directorate of Foundations through a court decision and reopened for Muslim worship in July 2013.

After the conversion from museum to mosque, 33 historic artifacts from the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman eras in the garden of Trabzon’s Hagia Sophia were moved to the Trabzon Museum in January 2014.

Source: Hurriyet Daily News [May 01, 2015]

Flanked by River Haro on the one side and Margalla Hills on the other, Taxila is a vast serial site that includes a Mesolithic cave and the archaeological remains of four early colony sites. “It is one of the most important archaeological sites in Asia,” according to UNESCO.

With so much to show the world, Taxila is ignored on the tourist map largely because of the country’s security situation, lack of tourism promotion, and privation of facilities in the city.

From the famous Grand Trunk (GT) Road, a small and poorly metalled road leads to Taxila Museum and the archaeological sites. The picturesque lush green natural landscape has changed dramatically over the last 25 years.

Unplanned houses, hand carts, shops and vendors’ stalls are the modern hallmarks of the area, instead of its previous relaxing and enjoyable natural beauty. The rapid urbanisation of the area and the plunder of the sites has cost the sites dearly and yet nobody pays attention to it.

The results are obvious. The Global Heritage Fund has identified Taxila as one of 12 sites worldwide that are “On the Verge” of irreparable loss and damage. The fund’s 2010 report attributes this irreparable loss to insufficient management, development pressure, looting, and war and conflict as primary threats.

Moving along the dusty and crowded Grand Trunk (GT) Road from Islamabad to Taxila, the monument of Brigadier general John Nicholson, a famous military figure of the British Empire, greets a visitor. The monument is located on the Margalla Hills — the gateway to Taxila.

The sighting of Nicholson’s monument takes the visitor instantaneously to the days of British Colonial Raj. The time when teams of archaeologists were digging around the town of Taxila in search of the lost civilisations. The finding has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

“It’s the marvel Pakistan got from the British Colonial Raj and yet it has not properly promoted as a tourist destination,” said Javed Iqbal, an archaeologist. Taxila is one of the three top Pakistani archaeology sites including the ruins of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro — two of the main cities that comprise the Indus Valley Civilisation, he said.

Sir John Marshall, the director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India from 1902 to 1928, began the excavations at Taxila that continued for the next twenty years. In 1918, Marshall laid the foundation stone of the Taxila Museum to preserve the precious findings.

The museum is built in the middle of the archaeological site and has a rich collection of relics, artefacts, stupas, and stone and stucco sculptures from different Buddhist monasteries, Gandhara Art and the Kushana period. The Kingdom of Gandhara lasted from the Vedic period (1500-500 BC) as a centre of Graeco-Buddhism, Bactrian Zoroastrianism and Animism.

Ahmad Alamgir, another archaeologist and historian, who met me at the museum said that only one significant development had been carried out by the government of Pakistan in almost a century.

“Sir Marshall actually could not complete the original plan of the museum when he had to leave for England. After the creation of Pakistan, the government of Pakistan constructed the northern gallery of the museum in 1998 … and that’s it,” he said.

The museum has a number of galleries in which findings from the surrounding sites have been presented subject wise. There are lines of wall and table showcases in the galleries and a complete stupa, from the Buddhist monastery of Mohra Moradu, stands in the middle of the main hall of the museum.

A vast collection of stucco heads of Buddha showing different faces and styles is the main attraction for tourists. The big Buddha heads are typically Gandharan in style, according to the archaeologists.

City of Cut Stone

The historic town of Taxila, originally Takaśilā in Sanskrit  (meaning City of Cut Stone) is located around 35km from Islamabad just off the famous Grand Trunk Road. The city is still famous of its artisans, who keep their ancestors’ profession alive, by making stone sculptures, murals and panels.

They also produce flower pots, planters, fountains, garden ornaments, balusters, pillars and railings, and fire places. Taxila, according to historians, thrived from 518BC to 600AD. In 326BC Alexander the Great and his armies encountered charging elephants in battle against Hindu king Porus.

Before fighting the battle, Alexander marched through the city and was greeted by King Ambhi. In 300BC Taxila was conquered by the Mauryan Empire under Chandragupta Maurya that disintegrated the Bactrian Greeks, the successors of Alexander, in 190BC. Ashoka, the legendary king of India, ruled Taxila as governor under his father Bindusara’s rule. The city, which is a part of Rawalpindi district, is now a main industrial town of Pakistan with heavy machine factories and industrial complex, stoneware and pottery.

Author: Aftab Kazmi | Source: Gulf News [July 18, 2015]

The Signal Moment In the Architectural Culture

The Guggenheim Museum is a museum of modern and contemporary art, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, built by Ferrovial, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain.

It is built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city of Bilbao to the Atlantic Coast. The Guggenheim is one of several museums belonging to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The museum features permanent and visiting exhibits of works by Spanish and international artists.

One of the most admired works of contemporary architecture, the building has been hailed as a "signal moment in the architectural culture", because it represents "one of those rare moments when critics, academics, and the general public were all completely united about something." The museum was the building most frequently named as one of the most important works completed since 1980 in the 2010 World Architecture Survey among architecture experts.

VIA «The Guggenheim Museum [Bilbao, Spain]»

In a cultural event held by Alexandrina Bibliotheca on Monday, Ibrahim said the project will be a culturally entertaining one that will completely change tourism in Egypt.

“After the Mediterranean Sea submerged ancient Alexandria as result of an earthquake, excavation works have helped to recover thousands of relics that date back to different historic eras like the pharaonic, Ptolemaic, Romanian and Islamic.”

“Doubles of these relics are still underwater, which led us to think about the first underwater museum in Egypt. According to our designs, it will be a glass one,” he added.

Among the obstacles that face the project, Ibrahim included “the wide areas of submerged antiquities underwater, the necessity of having a large number of archaeological divers to carry out periodic maintenance. Also, ships and sailing boats will be banned from navigating above the museum area.”

Mona Mokhtar, a tour guide who holds a master's degree on maritime museums said, “My master's thesis came down to the fact that 65 percent of tourists in the world look for entertainment, while 10 percent search for culture and 25 percent for other reasons, including treatment.”

“Constructing the first underwater museum in Egypt will be a mix between entertainment and cultural tourism, as it will offer diving and historic information on the story of Egypt's submerged antiquities and the eras they belong to,” Ibrahim said.

Source: Egypt Independent [May 26, 2015]

The recovery of the 800 items from museums, universities and auction houses in the United States, Italy and Jordan marks a small victory for Iraqi authorities struggling to protect their heritage from theft and destruction by Islamic State fighters.

The hardline Islamist militants have taken over some of the world's richest archaeological sites in northern Iraq, home to Assyrian cities dating back 2,700 years and the Graeco-Roman era desert complex of Hatra.

Videos released by Islamic State show several sites bulldozed, blown up or battered with sledgehammers. Officials say priceless antiquities have also been stolen to help fund the militants' self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Wednesday's collection of returned items, put on show at Baghdad's national museum, was modest compared to the suspected scale of the ongoing theft and destruction.

It included dozens of metal spearheads which officials said dated back to Iraq's Sumerian era between 4,000 and 2,000 B.C., tiny vases, pottery seals and fragments with cuneiform writing.

Some had been identified when they came up for sale at auction houses. Others were recovered from long-term loans to universities abroad, officials said.

The collection included nearly 200 items that went missing from Iraq's presidential palaces in the turmoil which followed the U.S.-led invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein, they said.

Alongside the white china tea set - each item marked with an eagle to represent the Iraqi republic - was a large ceremonial sword, silver cutlery and two rifles.

Government ministers attending a ceremony to mark their return called for greater international help to protect Iraq's antiquities, saying the scale of the threat was unprecedented.

Islamic State, which rejects all but its own narrow interpretation of early Sunni Islam as heresy, has destroyed ancient temples, shrines, churches, manuscripts, statues and carvings in territory it has seized. Officials say it has also looted widely, selling artefacts to fund its rule.

"We are not dealing with smugglers but a group that calls itself a state, carries weapons and trades in antiquities," Tourism and Antiquities Minister Adel Shirshab said. "The world must pay attention to the new danger".

More than three months after Islamic State fighters released video footage of them smashing statues and carvings at Mosul museum and the ancient sites of Hatra, Nimrud and Nineveh, Shirshab told Reuters it was hard to assess the damage.

"The region is under terrorist control. We don't have precise, detailed information...The situation is fluid and unclear.

Shirshab said that footage showing destruction at the sites was deliberately put out to obscure Islamic State fighters' real aim. "Many of these antiquities were stolen to fund this terrorist group," he said.

Author: Dominic Evans | Source: Reuters [July 08, 2015]

Some 47 artifacts were stolen on Saturday, including a granite statute of a man and a woman, 31 coins of the Graeco-Roman era and 15 pots and bottles used to store perfume, Khaleefa told Youm7.

The pieces have been placed in temporary storage until the re-inauguration of the museum after restoration work is completed. The store contains some 2,500 pieces.

Earlier on Monday, eight people allegedly involved in the theft were arrested and referred to prosecution. They will be detained for four days pending investigations.

Preliminary investigations into the incident showed damages to door locks of the store as well as other artifacts were broken.

Work at the museum was halted for five years due to political circumstances following the January 25 Revolution in 2011. The Minister of Antiquities recently stated that the total repairs at the museum will cost 10 million EGP ($1.3 million.)

Source: The Cairo Post [April 29, 2015]

When the first ones were discovered 100 years ago, archaeologists marvelled at the ancient relics, some of them foetuses, their little bodies amazingly intact.

But now the mummies, which are believed to be the oldest on earth, are melting. Mariela Santos, curator at the University of Tarapaca museum, noticed a few years ago that the desiccated skins of a dozen of the mummies were decomposing and turning into a mysterious black ooze.

"I knew the situation was critical and that we'd have to ask specialists for help," said Santos, whose museum stores and displays the so-called Chinchorro mummies, which date back as far as 5000 BC and are among archaeology's most enigmatic objects.

Within weeks, university staff members had contacted Harvard scientist Ralph Mitchell, an Ireland native who specialises in finding out why relics are falling apart. A bacteria sleuth of sorts, Mitchell has taken on assignments that included identifying a mysterious microflora breaking down Apollo spacesuits at Washington's National Air and Space Museum, analysing dark spots on the walls of King Tut's tomb and studying the deterioration of the Lascaux cave paintings in France.

Mitchell launched an investigation of the mummies' deterioration and this year issued a startling declaration: The objects are the victims of climate change. He concluded that the germs doing the damage are common microorganisms that, thanks to higher humidity in northern Chile over the last 10 years, have morphed into voracious consumers of collagen, the main component of mummified skin.

Mitchell believes that the case of the disintegrating Chinchorro mummies should sound a warning to museums everywhere.

"How broad a phenomenon this is, we don't really know. The Arica case is the first example I know of deterioration caused by climate change," Mitchell said. "But there is no reason to think it is not damaging heritage materials everywhere. It's affecting everything else."

Conservation of the fragile mummies has been a constant concern of researchers and curators since German researcher Max Uhle's archaeological expedition to Arica ended in 1919. Named after the nearby beach district where Uhle uncovered them, the Chinchorro mummies - about 120 of which are at the museum - are considered special for many reasons in addition to their age.

The community that made them was at the early hunter-gatherer stage of social evolution, compared with more advanced mummy-making civilisations such as the Egyptians, who had progressed to agriculture and trade, said Bernardo Arriaza, a professor at the University of Tarapaca's Institute of Advanced Research.

"Chinchorro mummies were not restricted to the dead of the top classes. This community was very democratic," said Arriaza, who for 30 years has led archaeological digs on the 500-mile stretch of Chilean coastline where most of the mummies have been found.

Arriaza spends some of his days at a dig on a cliff overlooking Arica. A score of partially unearthed mummies, possibly of the same family, cover a sloping area about 50 feet across. It's one of many sites that construction has revealed, in this case digging for a pipeline.

Vivien Standen, an anthropology professor at Tarapaca and co-author with Arriaza of dozens of papers on the Chinchorro mummies, said they are also unusual in that they include human foetuses.

"That's a very special facet, the empathy that it demonstrates, especially compared with modern times where foetuses are simply abandoned," Standen said.

Volcanic pollution of drinking water evident in the presence of arsenic in the mummies' tissue may hold the key to why the community began mummifying its dead.

"Arsenic poisoning can lead to a high rate of miscarriages, and infant mortality and the sorrow over these deaths may have led this community to start preserving the little bodies," Arriaza said. "Mummification could have started with the foetuses and grown to include adults. The oldest mummies we have found are of children."

Chinchorro mummies have survived into modern times only because of the arid conditions of the Atacama Desert, said Marcela Sepulveda, the university archaeologist who made the initial contact with Harvard's Mitchell.

Sepulveda said it was possible that other groups in Latin America were doing the same thing, "but what is unusual here is that thanks to the climate, the mummies have been conserved."

Arriaza and Sepulveda both direct laboratories with high-powered electron microscopes dedicated to the analysis of materials found on and around the mummies. Continued decomposition of the mummies jeopardises their research, they said.

"Just raising them from the ground introduces the challenge of not breaking them," said Santos, the museum curator. "But over the last several years, the higher humidity - and how to deal with it - has presented a whole new challenge."

After months of growing cultures of microorganisms collected from the skins of the decomposing Chinchorro mummies and comparing their DNA with known bacteria, Mitchell identified the transgressors as everyday germs "probably present in all of us" that suddenly became opportunistic.

"It was a two-year project to identify and grow them and then putting them back on the skin to show what was breaking down," said Mitchell, a professor emeritus who donated his time to the Chileans.

Mitchell had used the same painstaking process to identify the bug causing stains on the walls of King Tut's tomb in Egypt, and to conclude that the germs weren't introduced after the tomb was discovered in 1922 but probably were on the walls of the crypt when the boy king was entombed about 1300 BC.

Similarly, Mitchell used microbial analysis to investigate the erosion of Maya monuments at Chichen Itza at the request of the Mexican government. He found that the application of a polymer coating, far from protecting the ancient carvings and buildings as intended, was actually abetting the destructive microorganisms that were causing the stone work to crumble.

He also has an ongoing project at the USS Arizona monument at Pearl Harbor, where bacteria that thrive in the oil leaking from the battleship's fuel tanks are accelerating the disintegration of the sunken World War II vessel.

Mitchell began specializing in microbial damage to cultural relics in the mid-1990s, when the Italian government invited him to look at widespread damage to centuries-old frescoes at churches and palaces.

He identified Italy's main problem as industrial pollution, and thus came to the sad conclusion he has arrived at several times since: Isolating the problem doesn't always lead to a practical solution.

Mitchell seems more optimistic in his work with the Chilean mummies. Over the next two years, he and the faculty at the University of Tarapaca will be working on possible solutions to the deterioration. He thinks humidity and temperature control offer the best chance of stabilizing the relics.

Mitchell and the archaeologists feel a sense of urgency: The Chilean government has budgeted $56 million for a new museum scheduled to open in 2020 to house the mummies, and everyone wants the right climate controls built in to the new structure to safeguard the relics.

"The next phase of the project is to look at how you protect the mummies and at possible physical and chemical solutions to the problem, which we don't have yet," Mitchell said. He and the Chileans will experiment with different combinations of humidity and temperature to determine an optimal ambience.

Optimally, each mummy will be encased in its own glass cubicle in the new museum and have its own "microclimate," Arriaza said. But the irony is not lost on him and his fellow archaeologists that mummies that survived millenniums in the ground are proving fragile in the face of changing conditions of modern times.

"I'm not optimistic we can save them," said Standen, the anthropology professor. "From the moment they are taken out of the ground, they start deteriorating."

Author: Chris Kraul | Source: LA Times [May 08, 2015]

Looting of the country's cultural heritage has increased since the popular uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and during the years of political turmoil that followed.

The huge National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation was created in collaboration with UNESCO and has yet to open to the public.

"Two curators were arrested while replacing a pharaonic statue of (fourth dynasty) King Menkaure, discovered in Luxor's Karnak temple, and an ancient Islamic lantern with fake ones," Antiquities Minister Mamdouh al-Damati said in a statement.

The arrests came following a police investigation into ancient Islamic artefacts being stolen from the museum's storage area and later being put up for auction in London.

A ministry committee will make an inventory of the "priceless" collection that includes artefacts from prehistoric times to the present day, the statement added.

Source: AFP [June 04, 2015]

Archaeologist Matthew Vincent has started a technology initiative to counter ISIS’s destruction — and he says his approach could work in other fragile and war torn states too.

Vincent and his colleagues at the Initial Training Network for Digital Cultural Heritage, a programme focusing on the electronic documentation and protection of cultural heritage, have set out to create digital replicas of Mosul Museum’s relics through Project Mosul.

The project’s volunteers primarily use a technique called automatic photogrammetry. This relies on photographs of the destroyed objects, crowdsourced from people who have visited the museum. The team input a series of photos of each object taken from different angles into software that triangulates key points on the object’s surface to create a digital 3-D model. About a dozen pictures are needed to do this.

Vincent and his team have already digitally reconstructed a selection of the lost artefacts — including the ornate gate below.

Li Xiaojie, head of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, presented a gold ornament to Liu Weiping, Gansu provincial governor, at a hand-over ceremony on Monday morning, marking the relics' return.

It was the first time cultural relics have been successfully returned to China following bilateral negotiations between the Chinese and French governments. They were returned by French private collectors Francois Pinault and Christian Deydier earlier this year.

The 32 gold items came from tombs in Dabuzishan in Lixian County, Gansu Province dating back to the Spring and Autumn period (770 BC-476 BC). The tombs were badly looted during the 1990s and a large number of relics, including the gold ornaments, were smuggled abroad.

A public exhibition of the relics also opened on Monday and will last until Oct. 31. After that, they will be permanently displayed at the Gansu Provincial Museum.

Source: Xinhua [July 20, 2015]

Despite providing some of the oldest art in the world, Africa’s rock art tradition has long been overlooked by archaeologists and art historians alike.

Now the British Museum and Kenyan-based archaeological charity TARA (Trust for African Rock Art) are working to preserve this endangered heritage.

“The Museum wants to make Africa’s rock art available to both scholars and the general public alike. We hope to both protect and share this remarkable history for free with a global audience,” says Elizabeth Galvin, Curator of the African Rock Art Image Project.

The rock art tradition began in Africa 50,000 years ago, but abstract engravings may be up to 77,000 years old. It long predates writing, so serves as an important historical window into the culture and beliefs of early humans, and the world in which they lived. Today only a handful of isolated groups engage in the tradition, with a few sites still being used for fertility and rainmaking rituals.

The places in which ancient rock art is found have been little documented and largely unprotected, leading to a deterioration of the sites and the art itself. In 1996, TARA was set up, in order to record and protect the rich rock art heritage of the African continent.

The Nairobi-based NGO are committed to improving awareness about this tradition, and the endangered state that rock art sites are in.

In the videos that appeared in April, militants can be seen taking sledge hammers to the iconic winged-bulls of Assyria and sawing apart floral reliefs in the palace of Ashurnasirpal II in Nimrud before the entire site is destroyed with explosives. But according to Qais Hussein Rashid, head of Iraq's State Board for Antiquities and Heritage, that was just the final step in a deeper game.

"According to our sources, the Islamic State started days before destroying this site by digging in this area, mainly the palace," he told The Associated Press from his office next to Iraq's National Museum - itself a target of looting after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. "We think that they first started digging around these areas to get the artifacts, then they started demolishing them as a cover up."

While there is no firm evidence of the amount of money being made by the Islamic State group from looting antiquities, satellite photos and anecdotal evidence confirm widespread plundering of archaeological sites in areas under IS control.

Nimrud was also the site of one of the greatest discoveries in Iraqi history, stunning golden jewelry from a royal tomb found in 1989, and Rashid is worried that more such tombs lie beneath the site and have been plundered. He estimated the potential income from looting to be in the millions of dollars.

Experts speculate that the large pieces are destroyed with sledgehammers and drills for the benefit of the cameras, while the more portable items like figurines, masks and ancient clay cuneiform tablets are smuggled to dealers in Turkey.

On Wednesday, Egypt, together with the Antiquities Coalition and the Washington-based Middle East Institute will be holding a conference in Cairo entitled "Cultural Property Under Threat" to come up with regional solutions to the plundering and sale of antiquities.

This isn't the first time, of course, that Iraq's antiquities have fallen victim to current events. There was the infamous looting of the museum in 2003 and reports of widespread plundering of archaeological sites in the subsequent years, especially in the south. U.S. investigators at the time said al-Qaida was funding its activities with illicit sales of antiquities.

What appears to be different this time is the sheer scale and systematic nature of the looting, especially in the parts of Syria controlled by the Islamic State group. Satellite photos show some sites so riddled with holes they look like a moonscape.

The G-7's Financial Action Task Force said in a February report that the Islamic State group is making money both by selling artifacts directly - as probably would be the case with material taken from the museums - or by taxing criminal gangs that dig at the sites in their territory. After oil sales, extortion and kidnapping, antiquities sales are believed to be one of the group's main sources of funding.

In February, the United Nations passed a resolution recognizing that the Islamic State group was "generating income from the direct or indirect trade," in stolen artifacts, and added a ban on the illicit sale of Syrian antiquities to the already existing one on Iraqi artifacts passed in 2003.

While Iraq contains remains from civilizations dating back more than 5,000 years, the hardest hit artifacts have come from the Assyrian empire, which at its height in 700 B.C. stretched from Iran to the Mediterranean and whose ancient core almost exactly covers the area now controlled by the Islamic State group.

The looted artifacts most likely follow the traditional smuggling routes for all sorts of illicit goods into Turkey, according to Lynda Albertson, head of the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art. From there, the most common route is through Bulgaria and the Balkans into Western Europe. Britain and the United States remain the biggest markets for antiquities, though wealthy collectors are emerging in China and the Gulf - especially for Islamic-era artifacts.

International bans make the ultimate sale of illicit antiquities difficult, but not impossible. So far, there have been no reports of major, museum-quality pieces from IS-held territory appearing in auction houses, so the artifacts must be going to either private collectors or they are being hoarded by dealers to be slowly and discretely released onto the market, said Patty Gerstenblith, Director of the Center for Art, Museum and Cultural Heritage Law at DePaul University.

"I do believe that dealers are willing to warehouse items for a long time and that they may be receiving some `financing' to do this from well-heeled collectors or other dealers operating outside of the Middle East," she said. "It is relatively unlikely that a major piece would be plausibly sold on the open market with a story that it was in a private collection for a long period of time."

Mesopotamian sculptures, jewelry and stelae sold legally have commanded stunning sums, up to $1 million in some cases, but the looters would be selling them to dealers for a fraction of that cost - with the profit margin coming from the sheer number of artifacts being sold.

Iraq has sent lists to the International Council of Museums, the U.N. and Interpol detailing all the artifacts that might have been looted from the museum in Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city overrun by IS last June. Harder to stop, however, is the sale of never-before-seen pieces that have been newly dug up and never registered.

There is new legislation going through the U.S. Congress to tighten controls on illicit trafficking of materials from the Middle East, though Albertson contends that the laws are less important than the manpower devoted to enforcing them.

"A new resolution is just another well-intentioned piece of ineffective paper," she said.

The Iraqi government is now rushing to document the remaining sites in the country, especially in the disputed province of Salahuddin, just south of the Islamic State stronghold in Nineweh province. Nineweh itself is home to 1,700 archaeological sites, all under IS control, said Rashid of the antiquities department.

As a number of experts point out, though, most sites in Iraq have not been completely excavated and there are likely more winged bull statues and stelae waiting to be found under the earthen mounds scattered throughout this country - assuming the Islamic State group and its diggers don't find them first.

Author: Paul Schemm | Source: The Associated Press [May 12, 2015]

The dealer, Subhash Kapoor, is now awaiting trial in India for allegedly looting artifacts worth tens of millions of dollars.

Mr. Kapoor operated a now-defunct gallery on the Upper East Side called Art of the Past. Prosecutors allege that between 1995 and 2012 he illegally imported and sold stolen antiquities from India, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, often using forged documents to pass the items off as legitimate.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations unit and the Manhattan district attorney’s office have together recovered more than 2,500 artifacts worth more than $100 million from the gallery and storage facilities in and around New York City.

Kenneth J. Kaplan, a lawyer in New York representing Mr. Kapoor, declined to comment Wednesday, but said his client had asserted his innocence both to him and to his counsel in India. Mr. Kapoor has not yet entered a plea in India, according to a spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.

The item recovered this week is a Chola-period bronze representing a Tamil poet and saint that dates to the 11th or 12th centuries, according to Brenton Easter, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations. The statue, which stands nearly two feet tall and weighs more than 80 pounds, was allegedly looted about a decade ago from a temple in a village in the southeastern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

The theft of the figure was “completely devastating” to the villagers, Mr. Easter said on Wednesday afternoon, as he stood by the open door of the van containing the relic parked on East 91st Street near Park Avenue. The item was smuggled into the U.S. labeled as a handicraft, and then offered for sale at Mr. Kapoor’s gallery on Madison Avenue.

In recent months some institutions that purchased objects from Mr. Kapoor have surrendered the items to Homeland Security Investigations. They include the Honolulu Museum of Art and the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts.

In a statement, Honolulu Museum Director Stephan Jost said in April that “clearly the museum could have done better” with its past vetting of objects. Dan L. Monroe, the Peabody Essex Museum director, said in a statement that month that the institution has undertaken “a rigorous internal assessment of its collection and is working in full cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security.”

This time around, the stolen object was voluntarily surrendered by an anonymous collector who had been contacted by investigators about the piece. Officials said the buyer was considered a victim because the statue was accompanied by a false provenance, or ownership history, that predated its theft.

“We commend this collector for his conscious decision to return this stolen idol,” said Raymond R. Parmer, Jr., special agent in charge of HSI New York. “We hope that other collectors, institutions and museums will continue to partner with HSI, and to see this surrender as a successful way to move forward when dealing with artifacts that might be of concern.”

The agency has recovered at least six other sacred Chola bronzes that it anticipates repatriating to the Indian government.

In April, the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed papers in New York State Supreme Court seeking the forfeiture of 2,622 items seized from the gallery and storage units in Manhattan, Queens and Long Island. The items were worth $107 million, according to the summons. Among them: a statue from India valued at $15 million, a large bronze statue from Cambodia or Thailand worth $5 million and a large standing Buddha from North India estimated at $7.5 million.

According to the April summons, Mr. Kapoor and his gallery manager, Aaron Freedman, “engaged in a common plan and scheme to illegally obtain and sell stolen items of art and conceal or disguise the nature, source and ownership of the illegally obtained property.”

Mr. Freedman pleaded guilty in December 2013 to five counts of criminal possession of stolen property and one count of conspiracy, according to the summons. Prosecutors said the antiquities were forfeitable from Mr. Kapoor and his gallery as proceeds and/or instrumentalities of crime.

Author: Jennifer Smith | Source: The Wall Street Journal [July 03, 2015]