Other contentious treasures
CONTESTED ARTEFACTS Benin Bronzes
More than a thousand 16th century plaques and sculptures from the historic capital of the Kingdom of Benin – now in south-west Nigeria – have resided in the British Museum since Benin City was captured by British forces and its Royal Palace destroyed, in 1897. Since 2018, the British Museum has been in discussion with senior museum colleagues in Lagos and Benin City, along with His Royal Majesty Oba Ewuare II, concerning “new opportunities for sharing and displaying” the “spoils of war”.
Nefertiti bust
This painted limestone bust of Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s wife, created by the court sculptor Thutmose in
1340 BC, was discovered in 1912 by the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt, and entered Berlin’s Egyptian Museum in 1923 after he insisted Egypt had agreed to share rights to half his findings. Since then, it’s been suggested that Borchardt was less than truthful about the sculpture’s true value. Egypt has requested its return since 1933, though Germany insists its ownership is not in doubt.
Priam’s treasure
In 1837, German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered a cache of 4,500-yearold items including gold jewellery, tools, vessels, copper shields and weapons in Anatolia that he believed evidence of the lost city of Troy. Naming his find “Priam’s treasure”, after King Priam of Troy, he smuggled the lot back to Berlin and into the Royal Museums. In 1945 Soviet troops found it in a protective underground bunker and took it to Moscow.
ALREADY RETURNED Head of Hades
In 2013, the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles returned a Head of Hades dating from 400–300 BC to the Museo Archeologico in Aidone, Sicily. The terracotta head had been purchased in 1985 for $530,000, but research at the Getty established it had been looted from the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone in the ancient city of Morgantina in the 1970s.
Nedjemankh’s coffin
In 2018, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art returned a gilded sarcophagus inscribed with the name Nedjemankh, a priest of the ram-god Heryshef, from the 1st century BCE, after learning that it had been looted from Egypt in 2011. The Museum purchased the coffin for nearly $4 million in July 2017, but customary vetting procedures revealed that they had been supplied with a false ownership history and fake documentation, including a forged 1971 export licence.
Buddhist heads
In 2019, the British Museum began overseeing the return of more than 150 artefacts that had been smuggled out of heritage sites in Iraq and Afghanistan during recent wars. The items, which were seized by customs and brought to the museum for cataloguing, include a 1,500-yearold bodhisattva torso and nine Buddhist clay heads, which will be returned to the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul.