The British Museum has asked the public to help it identify and recover items believed to have been stolen from its collection, as it announced it had already retrieved 60 missing items and identified a further 300.
The museum said the majority of the missing items were from its gems and jewellery collection, including gold rings, earrings, bracelets and necklaces, and were mostly from Greece and Rome. It has provided images it says shows items similar to those are missing in the hope that people will recognise them.
Some of the jewellery is believed to date back to the late bronze age and the Hellenistic (about 15th-11th century BC) and Roman periods.
The British Museum disclosed last month that an estimated 2,000 artefacts had been taken over a significant period of time. An unnamed member of staff was sacked and the British Museum is taking legal action.
In the fallout, the museum’s director, Hartwig Fischer, and his deputy, Jonathan Williams, resigned.
On Tuesday, the museum said 60 items had been returned and 300 were “due to be returned imminently”.
The pictures released show items ranging from a Roman sard gem engraved with representations of the Greco-Egyptian god Sarapis and this Egyptian goddess Isis; a piece of blue glass showing a helmeted figure with a double axe killing a four-headed serpent; a Hellenistic oval stone engraved with an image of a young warrior on a rock; a Cypriot necklace with horned lions’ head clasps; and a Cypriot gold earring in a twisted shape.
George Osborne, the chair of the museum’s trustees, said last month that the museum did not have a complete catalogue of everything in its collection, amassed over several hundred years. “Someone with knowledge of what’s not registered has a big advantage in removing some of those items,” he said.
Ittai Gradel, a Dutch antiquities dealer, has previously said he bought scores of museum artefacts online, including on eBay. He said he alerted the British Museum to potential wrongdoing two years ago but no action was taken.
A Metropolitan police investigation is under way and a man was interviewed under caution on 23 August. An independent review into why the items went missing and what can be done in the future is being led by the former trustee Sir Nigel Boardman and the chief constable of the British Transport Police, Lucy D’Orsi.
The museum said it was using an international panel of experts including James Ratcliffe, of the Art Loss Register, and Lynda Albertson, of the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art to help recover the objects.
The missing artefacts are on the Art Loss Register, a private database of lost, stolen and looted art and antiquities.
D’Orsi said she and Boardman were “very grateful for the support we have received” from outside experts. “We have seen an encouraging start to the recovery programme and have been particularly impressed by the hard work and dedication of the British Museum staff working with us,” she said.
Ratcliffe said: “The British Museum’s approach has carefully balanced the need to provide information to the public to assist the recovery efforts with the fact that providing too much detail risks playing into the hands of those who might act in bad faith.
“Thanks to our position as the principal due diligence resource for the art market, and experience in the recovery of stolen art and cultural property, the Art Loss Register has an unrivalled ability to assist with the museum’s recovery programme. We are delighted to provide our assistance on a pro bono basis to the excellent team at the museum to support their efforts.”
