Ancient Roman Figurines Saved

Libyan authorities unveil ancient Roman figurines seized from Gadhafi forces

( Abdel Magid al-Fergany / Associated Press ) - Recovered stone heads, ancient Roman artifacts, are seen on display in Tripoli, Libya, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011. Moammar Gadhafi’s forces tried to flee Tripoli with a sack of ancient Roman artifacts in hopes of selling them abroad to help fund their doomed fight, Libya’s new leaders said Saturday as they displayed the recovered objects for the first time. The director of the state antiquities department, Saleh Algabe, hailed the find of 17 pieces, mostly small stone heads, as an important recovery of national treasures.

By Associated Press, Updated: Saturday, November 26, 11:01 AM
TRIPOLI, Libya — Moammar Gadhafi’s forces tried to flee Tripoli with a sack of ancient Roman artifacts in hopes of selling them abroad to help fund their doomed fight, Libya’s new leaders said Saturday as they displayed the recovered objects for the first time.
The director of the state antiquities department, Saleh Algabe, hailed the find of 17 pieces, mostly small stone heads, as an important recovery of national treasures.

The pieces included a female figurine evocative of ancient fertility symmbols, several small stone human heads and two ornate terracotta fragments. Algabe said the figurines were likely used in pagan worship and dated back to the second and third centuries A.D., when a swathe of North Africa belonged to the Roman Empire.

Algabe said the pieces were seized from a car on the road to Tripoli’s airport in August as revolutionary forces were sweeping into the capital. It appeared Gadhafi’s forces wanted to smuggle them out of the country and sell them at auction to fund their fight, he said. Officials did not know how much the objects were worth.

The pieces probably do not represent a major component of Libya’s wealth of artifacts from the Roman era. Still, officials played up their recovery as significant.

Khalid Alturjman, a representative from the country’s National Transitional Council, said the anti-Gadhafi’s fighters’ seizure of them stands as “a great example of the sacrifice of these revolutionary men for this country.”

He formally handed them over to the antiquities department Saturday.
Algabe stressed that although they dated to the Roman era, they exhibited clear signs of local influence.

“This confirms the role of Libyans in civilization,” he said.

The conference was held in Tripoli’s main archaeological museum, which boasts a collection of ancient Roman statues and mosaics. The museum is housed within the Red Castle, a medieval fort that faces the Mediterranean Sea.

A museum employee said the recovered objects had once been part of the institution’s collection. However, members of Gadhafi’s regime had taken them, saying they were to be exhibited in European museums — and never returned them.

Libya boasts many ancient Roman structures, including the famed seaside ruins of Leptis Magna, east of Tripoli.

Almost all of Libya’s ancient archaeological sites and museums were spared damage during the recent civil war. NATO made a point of avoiding them during its bombing campaign, and Agabe said that the revolutionaries also made an effort to protect them.

“The Libyan people decided to protect their heritage,” Algabe said.

By Christian Lowe
TRIPOLI | Sat Nov 26, 2011

http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/11/26/idINIndia-60743420111126

(Reuters) - Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi stole ancient Roman artefacts when they fled Tripoli, bundled them into sacks and planned to sell them abroad, Libya's new rulers said on Saturday as they displayed the haul for the first time since its recovery.

The artefacts - a collection of 17 stone heads, most the size of tennis balls, and terracotta fragments dating from the second or third centuries A.D. - were recovered on Aug. 23 when anti-Gaddafi fighters intercepted a convoy of loyalists heading south from Tripoli.
"All of them (the artefacts) date back to Roman times but with very strong local influence," said Saleh Algabe, director of the Antiquities Department in the new Libyan government.

"They were captured in cars belonging to Gaddafi militia which shows they were probably planning to smuggle them out of the country to fund their fight," against the new Libyan leadership, Algabe told a news conference.

The carved stone heads in the collection appear to have been detached from statues. A section of a tile with what looked like an image of a dog decorated on it was also displayed.

The items were shown in public for the first time on Saturday at a ceremony when the government's security committee handed them over to the antiquities department.

"It (the collection) is important because it is very rare," said Algabe." These pieces confirm the contribution of the Libyan people to early human civilisation."

Libya was home to thriving Roman outposts beginning around the first century A.D. One Roman emperor, Septimius Severus, was born in Leptis Magna, on the site of the modern Libyan town of Khoms. He turned his hometown into a model Roman city and large parts of it are still intact.

FLIGHT FROM TRIPOLI

Officials said they were not sure if the items were stolen from a state institution because specialists were still conducting an inventory of government-owned antiquities.

Mustafa Terjuman, a security official with Libya's interim leadership, said the haul was recovered on the day anti-Gaddafi rebels marched into Tripoli, forcing most loyalist troops to flee.

"The revolutionaries found a unit of Gaddafi soldiers on the airport road (leading south out of Tripoli)," said Terjuman.

"There was a heavy battle, and as a result the Gaddafi troops left a number of vehicles. In one of the vehicles was a sack with these items."

He said there was a delay in returning the artefacts because the head of the unit which intercepted them was injured in the fighting soon after. After he returned from medical treatment abroad, he alerted the new government.

Libya overthrew Gaddafi in an seven-month war, the bloodiest of this year's Arab Spring uprisings. The country's cultural heritage emerged from the fighting relatively unscathed.

The biggest theft reported so far was a huge collection of ancient coins, jewellery and statuettes. It went missing from a bank vault in the eastern city of Benghazi early in the conflict when looters drilled through a concrete ceiling.