Ozgen acar used to be a reporter for Cumhuriyet, the oldest daily newspaper in Turkey, for ten years. 1970, he received a visit from British journalist Peter Hopekirk from the Sunday Times in London.
"I'm chasing the treasure," Hopcock told Acar in an intriguing way. "It was smuggled out of Turkey. It's a big secret that an American museum bought it.
Aka grew up in Izmir, on the west coast of Turkey. When his mother, a primary school teacher, took him to the museum in his hometown and the birthplace of ancient Greece, he tasted antiques very early. 1963, he traveled along the coastline of Turkey with a backpack and discovered the cultural wealth there. But he has always been interested in current affairs. Before he got his first job as a journalist, he studied political science and economics.
However, he was interested in Hopekirk's telephone. Earlier that year, American journalists smelled a scandal brewing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Boston Globe once wrote an article about a batch of gold treasures controversially acquired by the Boston Museum of Art, and in the process of doing so, it mentioned a "Ludian Storage Room", which was extracted from a grave near Saldis in the Hermes Valley of Turkey and was secretly held by the metropolis. 1In August, 970, * * * published a newsletter of The Times of London, in which Turkey formally requested details of suspected illegal export and warned that foreign archaeologists from any country would be prohibited from returning smuggled treasures. Theodore Rousseau, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, denied that the museum illegally exported anything, but mysteriously added, "There seems to be a rumor fabricated around something that may be true."
Hopkirk, a British journalist, is trying to break this story, but he needs a Turkish partner to help him find clues locally. He provided an opportunity for Acar to cooperate, investigate and publish in two papers at the same time. Acar caught a seemingly good story.
They followed the clue that Hopekirk got from his informant: hundreds of gold coins, jewels and household items were found near Hu Sake in southwestern Turkey. Hu Sake is the population center closest to the center of the Kingdom of Lidya in the 6th century BC. This treasure was bought by the London police. They know the source and provenance of these treasures, so they put them in the storage room. Acar went to Houssack, and residents of a small town said that no one had heard of the recently discovered gold mine. He also went to new york and visited the metropolis. He called the Ancient Near East Department and talked with the curator Oscar White Mas kaarlela. Mascarella told him that his department was not what he described.
In the end, the reporters failed to make any clear reports. Hopekirk was depressed, but acar was interested. He wants to know why a British journalist is so concerned about Turkish antiques. He began to consider this issue from another angle, thinking that this issue not only affects Turkish history, but also affects world culture and human history. He thinks that no one has the right to smuggle antiques. When he continued his research, a civilization, not Greece. After several years, the problem gradually disappeared, although it still remained in his mind. Then in the early 1980s, Acar moved to new york to work for Milliyet, another Turkish newspaper, and later became a freelancer. 1984 One day, when he visited the Metropolitan Museum, he was surprised to find that the 50 works on display were very consistent with his description of Ludian storage. They are simply called "the treasures of East Greece". It is out of the question. Acar has been watching the public exhibitions of the Metropolitan Museum and searching its catalogue for some signs that the museum really owns these works. "I was shocked," he recalled. "The villagers who took them know what these things are. At this time, I know they are like the lines on my own palm.
This is the evidence that Acar has been waiting for. He flew back to Turkey and was interviewed by the Minister of Education, showing him the information he had managed to collect for many years. Local villagers secretly excavated ancient tombs outside the city and sold the contents to smugglers. Smugglers sold a batch of treasures of Gionee Hall to a businessman, and the purchasing agency of these treasures was no less than the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Photographs of Turkish police compared the fragments seized from looters in the 1960s with the fragments of the Metropolitan Museum, but proved that the fragments of the Metropolitan Museum belonged to Lidian people and came from the same area as other fragments. "If all this is true," the minister replied, "then we will sue this metropolis." In 1986, acar tells this story in a series of seven articles. The title of the first article is "Turks are going back to Ludian, the treasure of the cross."
In acar's investigation, the road to theft became clear. 1965, four farmers in Gul town and Hu Sake town dug a grave named Ikiztepe, which was very big. These tombs are the tombs of the nobles and upper classes in Li Dian. Traditionally, the body was placed on the bed with valuables around it. After the police learned of the theft, they recovered some items at 1966 and handed them over to the Turkish Museum. But most of the cultural relics have left the country. Grave robbers sold their findings to the Turkish cultural relics smuggler Ali Bailly Lal, who sold the collection to J·J· Clemen, owner of Madison Avenue Art Museum, and George Zakos, a Swiss businessman. Metropolis bought a batch of Ludian treasures from 1966 to 1970. As often happens in this situation, when the news spread in Houssack and several local farmers successfully sold their trophies, others frantically dug holes in other places in Tumuli, Aktepe and Toptepe nearby, where they found more works of Lidian people: gold, silver, exquisite works of art and murals of the mausoleum itself. In his statement to the police, a robber described his efforts to dig the grave:
Sharon Waxman is the author of Looting: The Battle of Stolen Treasures in the Ancient World. (Joel Bernstein) In 2006, it was found that the hippocampus was stolen from the box and replaced by a fake. This fake is now on display in the Houssack Museum. (Sharon Waxman/Time Book) Trophy: Sharon Waxman's war for the stolen treasures of the ancient world. In Lidian, Zhang Qingzhu, a Turkish journalist Ozgen acar stood in front of a poster about the return of treasures. We dug for 9 to 10 days in turn ... On the first 10 day, we arrived at these stones, and each stone was almost 1.5 meters high and 80 centimeters wide ... It was difficult for five or six people to lift one of them. . . We tried to break stones with sledgehammers and playing cards, but failed. I blew up (the main entrance) with black powder,
The robber found a body with a pile of dust and a large piece of hair on it. But the gold and silver were not damaged. One of the tombs has 125 pieces.
At the same time, the treasures purchased by the Metropolitan Museum were submitted by Dietrich von Bosmer to the museum's acquisition committee. A few months ago, the museum just acquired most of its tombs in Hu Sake. Secondly, through legal proceedings, we found that our own records showed that in the 1960s, some museum staff might realize that even if they obtained these items, their sources were controversial. The Metropolitan Museum bought some cultural relics in a few weeks, and these cultural relics were sent directly to the museum's warehouse from a group of grave robbers through middlemen. Documents prove that museum officials know that these cultural relics are likely to be stolen and have been hidden for about 20 years. Nevertheless, the museum refused Turkey's request for more than ten years, and fought a lawsuit for six years until it finally admitted its behavior.
Back in Turkey, the victory has been completed. The Battle of Akka has been accepted by the local Houssack area, and the curator of the museum, Kazim Akbi Ikru, is now his dear friend and ally. He has taken action to stop the robbery in this area. Acar's slogan "History is beautiful where it belongs" has become a poster for libraries, classrooms, urban buildings and shops. The local Usak newspaper sounded the drum that was sent back to Ludian. 1993 10, just one month after the metropolitan concession, these cultural relics were transported back to Turkey in a grand celebration.
This lawsuit encourages Turkey to pursue other things that have been taken improperly. * * * Trace Sotheby's auction house to resell and plunder cultural relics, and sue its cultural relics held in Germany and London. Also traced back to the smuggling gang Teli family, through which acar once wrote in The Spectator that stolen antiques worth 654.38 billion dollars flowed in. The family sued acar and he was acquitted. Then he received death threats. He ignored them. Later, he learned that the plan was to kidnap him, tie him up and transport him to a museum in Switzerland with oxygen bottles. The Getty Museum abandoned a hypocrite sarcophagus carved and sold by robbers. The German Foundation gave up other parts of the same sculpture. Turkey became a famous leader in the struggle against plunder. By the second half of 1990s, the robbers were on the defensive. Smugglers want to work elsewhere. Turkey's lawsuit clearly shows its intention to safeguard the country's cultural rights.
For two years, the treasures stored in Ludian have been on display at the Anatolian Civilization Museum in Ankara. 1995, they were moved to Houssack and an old one-room museum in the town. His population has increased to100000. The return of hoards in Ludian not only makes Hu Sake people proud, but also makes the return a common cause of neighboring communities, which used to be the center of the ancient world. Even the robbers began to regret their actions. In the late 1990s, when acar visited Usak, he took three confessed grave robbers to the museum. "They cried and said,' We are so stupid. "We were all excited," he recalled proudly. "We created a kind of consciousness."
However, this awareness has not been translated into this kind of storage for readers. In 2006, Usak's top cultural official reported that only 769 people had visited the museum in the past five years. This may not be surprising, because only about 65,438+07,000 tourists have visited the area during this period, he said. Back in new york, metropolis has no impression of him. Harold holzer, a spokesman for the museum, said dryly, "The number of people who have visited these treasures in Turkey is about the same as that of the Metropolitan Museum of London in one hour." . In April 2006, Milliyet newspaper published another exclusive story on the front page: Golden Horse, the masterpiece of Lydian's cellar, which is now a symbol of Usak, and the pictures published on the front page of the local newspaper every day are fake. The real hippocampus was stolen from the Houssack Museum.