Monday 11 April 2016

"Five Artifacts, Stolen by ISIS from Palmyra Museum, Recovered"


Recovered stones
"Five Artifacts, Stolen by ISIS from Palmyra Museum, Recovered" scream the headlines (Hamda Mustafa,  Syria Times
Competent authorities on Saturday found five artifacts previously stolen by ISIS terrorists from the National Museum of Palmyra upon their attack on the city. According to a source in Palmyra, the artifacts were found buried inside a house in al-Maalef area in Palmyra during a combing operation in the historical city. The artifacts will later be handed over to the General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums, the source told SANA. ISIS terrorists, upon controlling the city, looted a large number of archeological pieces and relics from Palmyra and smuggled them abroad.
Except the bust shown looks to me like a fake. If they were "buried in a house", how is it known they were "looted from a [or 'the'] museum" and not freshly dug-up or freshly-made?

In my opinion, a fake Palmyran bust
The burying and recovery of the items was not very convincingly staged either, probably the ground was too hard for the fakers to dig a real hole, so they threw the pieces down in a wide but shallow scrabbled hole and posed them next to an old cement-covered shovel. I am not convinced that this is "evidence" of anything at all.



"That'll do guys, Hamid, take the photo..."

 

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