Described by the head of the British Museum, George Osborne The missing pieces are “small pieces of jewelry, precious stones and gold fragments that were not on public display.”
Osborne told the BBC it was not yet clear exactly how much cultural property was missing. “I’ll give you an estimate of about 2,000. But I must say it’s a very tentative figure.’And he mentioned.
“We have begun to recover some of the stolen parts, which is a glimmer of hope in a dark cloud.”He added, without giving details of what was recovered.
Osborne attributed the administration’s failure to act when the warnings were directed to the Museum Curators’ Working Group due to “I couldn’t believe someone inside was stealing things. I couldn’t believe a team member was doing this.” You were already aware of these alerts At least two years ago.
“We believe we have been the victims of thefts for a long time and, frankly, more could have been done to prevent these thefts,” Osborne said, adding that “forensic work” was ongoing to determine precisely what was at stake. The president said that security in the museum is already being improved.
The president also noted that a network of antique dealers is working with the museum to help locate some of the missing pieces.
The museum’s director, Hartwig Fischer, resigned on Friday, admitting that the foundation had not acted “appropriately” in the face of warnings of lost artifacts..
Inaccurate indexing
Pressure mounted on the British Museum when it announced in mid-August that it had fired a scholar/curator of classical collections. The reason is to identify “lost, stolen or damaged” artifacts.
On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Osborne said he was confident “honest people” would return stolen items, but conceded that “others may not”.
Osborne acknowledged that not all items had been “properly indexed and recorded” and suggested that “someone with knowledge of what is not registered has a great advantage in removing it”.
According to cultural heritage experts, artefacts allegedly stolen from the British Museum’s collections may never be recovered due to poor record-keeping.
to guardianGradel added that he first alerted the museum about the alleged thefts in 2020. He said the museum team discovered that nearly The entire set of 942 unregistered gems was missing.
Museum records describe the collection as a whole only and do not include details of individual pieces.
“These pieces have existed for more than 200 years without any record, which makes them an open invitation to theft,” he stressed.
Osborne laments that these developments “certainly damaged the reputation of the British Museum, which is a clear statement – and for this reason I apologize on your behalf“.
Insecurity in the Historical Museum
Christos Tsirogiannis, a forensic archaeologist who heads the UNESCO group dedicated to combating the illicit traffic in antiquities, described The robberies as the worst in recent history.
The British Museum was founded in 1753. Over the centuries, the museum has amassed a collection of around eight million cultural objects. As of 2019, only about 80,000 are on public display, with the rest held in reserves.
Some of the marble friezes of the classical Greek Parthenon | Carla Quirino – RTB
The Foundation calls for acting as a custodian of world archaeological and historical assets to serve future generations. But these events re-launch the pretext for a debate about the insecurity of the treasures that the British Museum claims to be guardians of.
