The Guardian (UK) reports on a suppressed report that reveals the archaeological treasures that were dug up after Gulf war…
A secret report on the chequered history of priceless Aramaic bowls loaned to a leading university has exposed an apparent attempt to cover up UK academic connections to a potentially deadly trade in stolen Iraqi antiquities.
The findings of the study, which was suppressed by a controversial legal agreement in 2007, have at last solved a long-standing archaeological mystery.
Commissioned by University College London in 2005, it confirms the expert view that the bowls were stolen from the historical site of Babylon and should be returned to Iraq or handed over to the police. The report was completed in 2006 but suppressed a year later in a legal settlement made between the university and the putative owner of the bowls, the multimillionaire Norwegian collector, Martin Schøyen.
But a copy of its findings recently placed in the House of Lords library reveals that specialists in archaeology are convinced that the incantation bowls, dating from the fifth to eighth centuries, must have come from Iraq illegally. They believe the rare finds were probably dug up from the remains of Babylon some time after the 1991 Gulf war and were not found in Jordan, as believed by Schøyen. The UCL report concludes that “the bowls are subject to the Iraq United Nations sanctions order 2003 as cultural objects illicitly removed from Iraq after 6 August 1990 and that UCL has therefore a duty to deliver them to a constable”.
The learned team of academics and researchers who worked on the report concluded that both the university and Schøyen were guilty of not showing enough curiosity about the source of the 654 bowls, although it is not suggested that Schøyen knew they might have been looted when he bought them. The team recommended they be returned immediately and asked for the findings to be made public. But in 2007 the report’s three authors were made to keep quiet about their conclusions and UCL paid an undisclosed sum of compensation to Schøyen. The authors are believed to have been unhappy about the legal gag…
Since 2007? That does seem like an awfully long time to keep quiet about this.
Read the rest here.
