Turkish Forum

Tag: Antiquities

  • Germany agrees to return Turkish sphinx

    Germany agrees to return Turkish sphinx

    Germany has agreed to return the 3,000-year-old Hittite sphinx to Turkey after almost a century, as a gesture of friendship between the two countries.

    A museum visitor looks at a Hittite sphinx in Berlin

    German and Turkish experts came to an agreement in a meeting in Berlin, where they discussed returning the relic which has been kept at the Pergamon Museum of the Museum Island in Berlin since 1934, Artdaily reported.

    The sculpture, which is partly intact, will be sent to Turkey before November 28, 2011, the 25th anniversary of the official recognition of Hattusha, where the object was found as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

    “The SPK has decided to make this voluntary gesture as a special sign of the close ties shared by both countries,” President of the Prussian Cultural Foundation (SPK) Hermann Parzinger said in an official statement.

    “I am heartened that this agreement now paves the way for a period of heightened, long-term collaboration in the area of culture and science. Both sides are due to benefit from it enormously.”

    The sphinx was found in pieces by a team of German archeologists in 1907 and sent to the Museum of the Ancient Near East in Berlin to be restored and assessed, along with a further 10,000 Hittite clay tablets.

    Experts say the relic had been part of a gate complex of the Hittite capital of Hattusha and dates back to the 2nd millennium BCE.

    The sculptural fragments found in 1907 were reassembled in the 1920s in Berlin, with some large parts replaced by plaster. Two sphinxes were formed out of the pieces and the best-preserved one was sent back to Istanbul in 1924.

    The second sphinx, however, was displayed in the Pergamon Museum together with a copy of its Istanbul counterpart.

    TE/HGH

    via PressTV – Germany agrees to return Turkish sphinx.

  • Turkey Cancels Excavations of Foreign Countries

    Turkey Cancels Excavations of Foreign Countries

    banner tarihimiz1The New York Times reports on Turkey’s renewed demands that artifacts in museums around the world be given to them.

    After years of pleading in vain for the return of Anatolia’s cultural treasures from Western museums, Turkey has started playing hardball. And it is starting to see some results.

    This month, Germany reluctantly agreed to return a Hittite statue taken to Berlin by German archaeologists a century ago. “It was agreed that the statue will be handed over to Turkey as a voluntary gesture of friendship,” the German government said after weeks of negotiations between the countries’ foreign ministries.

    Days later, Ankara announced it was stepping up a campaign to obtain a breakthrough in a similarly longstanding dispute with the Louvre in Paris over an Ottoman tile panel that went to France in 1895.

    […]

    Although the Turkish cases for restitution of the sphinx and the tiles have always been more compelling than those for other treasures, like the Pergamon Altar, that were exported with permission of the Ottoman authorities, Ankara’s requests for their restitution went unanswered for years.

    Then, Turkey changed tack. Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay announced earlier this year that he would kick German archaeologists out of the excavations at Hattusa, where they have been working for over a century, if the matter was not resolved. “I am determined not to renew the excavation license for Hattusa if the sphinx is not returned,” Mr. Gunay said in February.

    […]

    In a first that rocked the archaeological world in Asia Minor, the digging licenses of two longstanding excavations conducted by German and French teams were revoked earlier this year.

    […]

    The leader of the canceled German dig at Aizanoi, Ralf von den Hoff, said in an e-mail that his excavation had fallen victim to the ministry’s “extortionate demands” over the Hattusa sphinx.

    […]

    But Germany says the return of the sphinx is a one-of-a-kind deal. “Both sides agreed that the sphinx is a singular case that is not comparable to other cases,” the German government said.

    Turkey disagrees. “This is a revolution,” Mr. Gunay said last week about the agreement with the Germans. “This is a great development for the restitution of all our antique artifacts from abroad,” adding, “We will fight in the same way for the restitution of the other artifacts.”

    […]

    Mr. Gunay said he foresaw a long struggle ahead, of a century or more, but added that he believed that “in the end Europe will return all of the cultural treasures that it has collected from all over the world.”

    All governments take note. Turkey’s goal is nothing less than that “all of the cultural treasures” be “returned.”

    The article has much more. Is there any irony in the fact that in order to get some old artifacts returned Turkey would cancel excavations which would fill their museums with new discoveries?

    HT: Jack Sasson

    via BiblePlaces Blog: Turkey Cancels Excavations of Foreign Countries.

  • Turkey Presses Harder for Return of Antiquities

    Turkey Presses Harder for Return of Antiquities

    By SUSANNE GÜSTEN

    banner tarihimizISTANBUL — After years of pleading in vain for the return of Anatolia’s cultural treasures from Western museums, Turkey has started playing hardball. And it is starting to see some results.

    This month, Germany reluctantly agreed to return a Hittite statue taken to Berlin by German archaeologists a century ago. “It was agreed that the statue will be handed over to Turkey as a voluntary gesture of friendship,” the German government said after weeks of negotiations between the countries’ foreign ministries.

    Days later, Ankara announced it was stepping up a campaign to obtain a breakthrough in a similarly longstanding dispute with the Louvre in Paris over an Ottoman tile panel that went to France in 1895.

    The 16th-century ceramic, one of the finest surviving examples of Iznik ceramic art, once decorated the tomb of the Ottoman Sultan Selim II on the grounds of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. While the Louvre continues to maintain that the panel was acquired legally and is not eligible for restitution, Turkey says it was removed from the tomb by a French collector who replaced it with a fake and sold the original to the Louvre.

    The statue being surrendered by Germany is a stone sphinx that guarded a gate in the Hittite capital of Hattusa in central Anatolia between 1600 B.C. and 1200 B.C. Taken to Berlin for restoration in 1917 by German archaeologists excavating the site, it was not returned to Turkey, but incorporated into the collection of the Pergamon Museum, where it remains on display.

    The two artifacts head a list of cultural treasures from Asia Minor spanning several millennia that Turkey wants returned from the museums of half a dozen Western countries, including the United States and Britain.

    The list ranges from a small stele in the British Museum in London to the great Pergamon Altar, centerpiece of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, and includes such items as the top half of a Roman statue in possession of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the bottom half of which is on display at Antalya Museum in Turkey.

    Although the Turkish cases for restitution of the sphinx and the tiles have always been more compelling than those for other treasures, like the Pergamon Altar, that were exported with permission of the Ottoman authorities, Ankara’s requests for their restitution went unanswered for years.

    via Turkey Presses Harder for Return of Antiquities – NYTimes.com.