An ongoing saga involving looted treasures and political drama that began a half-century ago got here one step closer to closure after a trove of artefacts, some hundreds of years old, went on display at Cyprus’ archaeological museum.
The items were stolen by Turkish art dealer Aydin Dikmen from the north of the island throughout the upheaval of Turkey’s invasion.
They were taken from as many as 500 churches, AP reports, and the Cypriot authorities and the country’s Orthodox Church have been on the lookout for them ever since.
Many were held in Germany after being seized by authorities there in 1997, resulting in lengthy legal battles to secure their return. The last of them arrived back within the country earlier this yr.
The most recently returned artefacts at the moment are on display and include jewellery from the Chalcolithic Period between 3500-1500 BC and Bronze Age bird-shaped idols. Treasures looted by Dikmen but already returned include 1,500-year-old mosaics of the Saints Luke, Mark, Matthew, and James – incredibly rare examples of early Christian work.
The legal battle to return the items began in 2004, but repatriation didn’t occur until July 2013, with one other batch returned in August 2015 before the ultimate batch this yr.
Dikmen was accused of working with the occupation regime and his collaborators to ransack over fifty Greek Orthodox, Maronite, and Armenian Christian monuments, in addition to stealing antiquities from occupied museums and personal collections.
A 1997 raid on Dikmen’s premises discovered hundreds of stolen objects, including 318 relics of Cypriot origin, amongst them Sixth-century mosaics, prehistoric artefacts, and centuries-old frescoes.
The latest finding saw an agreement signed for the repatriation of ecclesiastical relics, and prehistoric and other antiquities, to Cyprus by June 20, a moment a press release from the Synodal Committee called a “historic day and a day of joy”.
