NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Cyprus on Monday displayed artifacts — some thousands of years old — that were returned after a Turkish art dealer looted them from the ethnically divided island nation decades ago.
Aydin Dikmen took the artifacts from the country’s separatist north in the years after the division of Cyprus in 1974, when Turkey invaded the country following a coup d’état mounted by supporters of union with Greece. The antiquities were kept in Germany after local authorities seized them in 1997, and protracted legal battles secured their repatriation in three batches, the latest this year.
Speaking at the opening ceremony at Cyprus’ archaeological museum, President Nikos Christodoulides said that the destruction of a country’s cultural heritage, as evidenced in recent conflicts, becomes a “deliberate campaign of cultural and religious cleansing aimed at eliminating identity.” .
Among the 60 most recently returned artifacts on display are jewelry from the Chalcolithic period, between 3,500-1,500 BC, and bird-shaped idols from the Bronze Age.
Antiquities that Dikmen also looted but were returned years ago include 1,500-year-old mosaics of Saints Luke, Mark, Matthew and James. They are among the few examples of early Christian works that survived the iconoclastic period in the 8th and 9th centuries, when most of these works were destroyed.
Cyprus authorities and the country’s Orthodox Church have for decades sought the island’s looted antiquities and centuries-old relics from around 500 churches at open auctions and on the black market.
The museum’s antiquities curator, Eftychia Zachariou, said at the ceremony that Cyprus has benefited in recent years from a change of thinking among authorities in many countries who now choose to repatriate antiquities of dubious provenance.
