Wednesday, 15 November 2017

Two Palmyra Busts in ISIL Hideout [UPDATED]


Two stolen statues found in Daesh hideout near Palmyra 15th November، 2017
The authorities on Wednesday found two stolen statues in a hideout of Daesh (ISIS) terrorists on the southern outskirt of ancient Palmyra city in the eastern countryside of Homs. SANA reporter in the central province said that two stolen statues were found in one of Daesh hideouts in al-Sawwana area to the south of Palmyra city, adding that the statues were handed to Homs Antiquities Department.  

UPDATE
Dorothy King adds: 'if they're real: hard to tell from photo'. Certainly the photo on the webpage is taken from a bad angle, and is formatted weirdly. The surfaces of the object do look smoother (the bloke's cheeks for example, the edges of that broken nose) and I was wondering too about these ones. Could one or both be plaster casts? Even if the latter were the case and some ISIL guy rummaging around abandoned buildings found them and took them to hiding elsewhere, from one point of view (what ISIL was up to) it is not important if he'd found real ones or was misled by fake ones, he/they still saw some value in hiding them for later use - though whether that was for sale or another smashing-antiquities-propaganda film, we will never know.

UPDATE UPDATE 20th Nov 2017
This video seems to show the same artefacts (Chris Tomson, 'VIDEO: Syrian Army recovers ancient artifacts stolen by ISIS in Palmyra'  al masdar news  15/11/2017 )    :
In a secret hideout in eastern Homs, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has discovered a large amount of artifacts that were removed from Palmyra Museum as ISIS overran the city back in 2015 Footage released by Syrian state television shows the SAA retaking the lost artifacts after they were discovered earlier this week. In addition, ISIS also captured a large batch of weaponry which was abandoned by ISIS before it fled from the sparsely populated area in 2017


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