Libyan Archaeological Treasures Looted Months Ago

Well of course they were.  What else would you expect?  Some Egyptians looted archaeological storage sites in their country, and probably the Egyptians of all people, despite being Muslim, are most cognizant with the actual value of maintaining their treasures in context and, to the extent possible, in situ, in their home country!  That brings in a hell of alot more dollars in tourism than you could ever get by selling something on the illegal antiquities market - if you don't get robbed and killed, that is.  Stupid suckers! 

From Art Daily

Interpol confirms Libyan treasure was looted

The largely forgotten cache of thousands of antiquities was taken by thieves months after the city was seized by rebel forces

By Martin Bailey | From issue 229, November 2011
Published online 31 Oct 11 (News)

Among the missing treasures, clockwise from top: an embossed thin gold plate depicting a battle, golden and wrought silver foils with human heads in profile, and a figure of Nikai

benghazi. Interpol has alerted police forces to the theft of the so-called “Benghazi Trea­s­ure”, which was stolen from a bank vault in the city on 25 May. The theft of thousands of antiquities went unpublicised at the time, some three months after rebel forces had seized Benghazi from troops loyal to the late Muammar Gaddafi.

The looted treasure, which includes Greek and Roman gold, had been stored in two padlocked second world war military chests and a safe. It has never been displayed in Libya and its existence had been virtually forgotten, except by specialist archaeologists.

Francesco Bandarin, Unesco’s head of culture, working with Libyan archaeologists, is ­det­ermined to hunt down the treasure; Interpol has alerted 188 national police forces. Inform­ation about the loss is scarce, but there is some new evidence, based on research by Italian archaeologist Serenella Ensoli, the Naples-based director of the Italian Arch­aeological Mission to Cyrene.

The antiquities had been deposited for safekeeping in the vaults of the National Com­mercial Bank in Omar al-Mukhtar Street, in the centre of Benghazi. The city was the main base of anti-Gaddafi rebels, who seized power there last February.

On 25 May, the two chests and the safe were apparently moved out of the vault, without proper authorisation, and sent to another bank building near the Hotel Dujal. Only one of the chests arrived, with the other chest and the safe going missing. To make matters worse, Ensoli suspects that the thieves went through the containers, looting the gold and silver and leaving the lesser material in the remaining chest, which went to the new location.

The Benghazi Treasure is the name given to a collection of the most important antiquities that were excavated in Cyrenaica after the first world war, when Italy occupied Libya following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The finest items were found in 1917 at the Temple of Artemis in Cyrene, the largest Greek site in Africa, which is east of Beng­hazi. Dating from the fifth and sixth centuries BC, the gold included earrings, embossed heads and a plaque depicting a battle.

Other material came from the Hellenistic Palace of Columns in Ptolemais (between Cyrene and Benghazi), which was excavated from 1937. A third element is the Meliu collection of 2,000 coins.

The Benghazi Trea­s­ure comprises 364 gold coins, 2,433 silver coins, 4,484 bronze coins, 306 pieces of jewellery and 43 other antiquities, including stat­ues. The story of its 20th-century history is only now emerging.

In 1942, when Allied forces were approaching Libya, Italian archaeologists packed up the treasure. Early the following year, they sent it to Rome in the military chests. In May 1944, the chests were moved for safekeeping to the northern city of Cremona and later to Val Brenta, in the Dolomites. After the war, the Libyan finds were returned to Rome and were deposited at the Museo Coloniale.

It was not until 1961 that the collection was finally returned to Libya. A typescript inventory was then compiled, unfortunately without photographs. On its return, the treasure was lodged in a bank vault in Benghazi, and remained there after Gaddafi seized power eight years later. In 1980, further archaeological finds were added to the material deposited at the bank. [Well, I hate to say I told you so, but this IS what happens when western nations return priceless antiquities to barbarians - for whatever reasons they do so.  Bad, bad, bad.  Kiss these artifacts goodbye forever.]

Earlier this year, after Libyan rebels established the National Transitional Council in Benghazi, Fadel Ali Mohammed was appointed chairman of the archaeology department. On 2 June, he wrote to the attorney-general, reporting the theft of the treasure. Fadel also wrote to the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, asking for assistance in documenting the treasure. The main problem is that there are few surviving photographs of the thousands of objects, a situation Ensoli describes as “absolutely deplorable”. This will make it difficult to identify pieces should they ever appear on the market.

Update

There have been reports that 500 coins and other antiquities from the Benghazi Treasure have turned up in Egypt, but these remain unconfirmed. It has also been suggested that the coins are being offered on the black market in Libya. The problem with individual coins is that without good photographs it will be difficult to prove their provenance, and to show that they were once part of the Benghazi Treasure. Unesco director-general Irina Bukova told a meeting in Paris that the loss represented “one of the largest thefts of archaeological material in history.” Unesco now hopes to send a mission to Tripoli and Benghazi to pursue inquiries.

Libyan Rock and Cave Art May Point to Origins of Egyptian Civilization

I'm not sure I haven't posted about this before.  But - just in case :)

Sahara cave may hold clues to dawn of Egypt
Mon May 24, 2010 9:35am GMT
By Patrick Werr

CAIRO (Reuters) - Archaeologists are studying prehistoric rock drawings discovered in a remote cave in 2002, including dancing figures and strange headless beasts, as they seek new clues about the rise of Egyptian civilisation.

Amateur explorers stumbled across the cave, which includes 5,000 images painted or engraved into stone, in the vast, empty desert near Egypt's southwest border with Libya and Sudan.

Rudolph Kuper, a German archaeologist, said the detail depicted in the "Cave of the Beasts" indicate the site is at least 8,000 years old, likely the work of hunter-gatherers whose descendants may have been among the early settlers of the then-swampy and inhospitable Nile Valley.

The cave is 10 km (6 miles) from the "Cave of the Swimmers" romanticised in the film the "English Patient", but with far more, and better preserved, images.

By studying the sandstone cave and other nearby sites, the archaeologists are trying to build a timeline to compare the culture and technologies of the peoples who inhabited the area.

"It is the most amazing cave ... in North Africa and Egypt," said Karin Kindermann, member of a German-led team that recently made a trip to the site 900 km (560 miles) southwest of Cairo.

"You take a piece of the puzzle and see where it could fit. This is an important piece," she said.

The Eastern Sahara, a region the size of Western Europe that extends from Egypt into Libya, Sudan and Chad, is the world's largest warm, dry desert. Rainfall in the desert's centre averages less than 2 millimetres a year.

The region was once much less arid.

About 8500 BC, seasonal rainfall appeared in the region, creating a savanna and attracting hunter-gatherers. By 5300 BC, the rains had stopped and human settlements receded to highland areas. By 3500 BC, the settlements disappeared entirely.

MOVING TOWARDS THE NILE VALLEY
"After 3-4,000 years of savanna life environment in the Sahara, the desert returned and people were forced to move eastwards to the Nile Valley, contributing to the foundation of Egyptian civilisation, and southwards to the African continent," said Kuper, an expert at Germany's Heinrich Barth Institute.

The mass exodus corresponds with the rise of sedentary life along the Nile that later blossomed into pharaonic civilisation that dominated the region for thousands of years and whose art, architecture and government helped shape Western culture.

"It was a movement, I think, step-by-step, because the desert didn't rush in. The rains would withdraw, then return, and so on. But step by step it became more dry, and people moved toward the Nile Valley or toward the south," Kuper said.

Kuper and his team are recording the geological, botanic and archaeological evidence around the cave, including stone tools and pottery, and will compare it to other sites in the Eastern Sahara region, adding new pieces to a prehistoric puzzle.

"It seems that the paintings of the Cave of the Beasts pre-date the introduction of domesticated animals. That means they predate 6000 BC," said Kuper, who led his first field trip to the cave in April 2009. "That is what we dare to say."

The visible art work covers a surface 18 metres wide and 6 metres high. In October, Kuper's team scanned the cave by laser to capture high-definition, three-dimensional images.

A test dig a few weeks ago during the team's third expedition to the sandstone cave uncovered yet more drawings that extend down 80 cms below the sand, Kindermann said.

"Now we have increasing evidence how rich the prehistoric culture in the Eastern Sahara was," Kuper said.

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I believe it was in Libya that Katherine Neville wrote about the gigantic carving/cave drawing of the White Goddess in her mega-hit novel "The Eight" back in the 1980s.

Check out:

Saharan Prehistoric Rock Art from Temehu.com

No references to the White Goddess would be complete without mentioning Robert Graves' work "The White Goddess" which, after nearly 10 years, I'm still wading through.  The book was recommended by IM Ricard Calvo, our mentor at Goddesschess, and so I dutifully plowed into it.  And I'm still plowing into it, long after The Chief passed away (in mid-September, 2002).  My dad passed away November 3, 2002, less than 2 months later.  In July, 2003, I lost Ken Whyld.  With his passing, I was left bereft of learned men to whom I could turn.

For some information on the sibyls of the ancient world ("white goddesses" who prophesized for worshippers), see Albuenea, The Roman White Sibyl.   You will notice the close association of this sibyl (and, indeed, all of the ancient sibyls) with sacred wells or sacred springs. 

Ngame, Mother Goddess of the Akan

My own note:  Alphito - archaic white "sow" goddess - actually linked to ancient barley cultivation, perhaps dating back to Catal Hoyuk days in Anatolia.

Greek Goddesses - Alphito:  Alphito was the Arcadian White Grain Goddess as a Sow. But by Classical timesshe was barely remembered. She was given sole rights over the ability to inflict leprosy. Scary. But she was kind of scary, so . . . Again, I have lost my source, so I can't verify this at all. What I CAN say for sure is that "alphito" is the Greek word for "barley."

Alphito - alphit:  Greek: barley; pearl barley; groats; originally "white grain."  Linked to practice of divination.

From the Probert Encyclopdedia (unsourced "source" - so take with a grain of salt): In Greek mythology, Alphito was a white goddess of barley flour, destiny and the moon. The hag of the mill and the lady of the nine heights.