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A marble bust from the Roman Empire that sits in Victoria University Classics Museum has been found to be illegally sold on the black market and will be returned to Italy.
The statue of an unknown Roman woman, likely from the Antonine period at the start of the firstmillennium AD, was sold and bought from a London dealer in good faith over 20 years ago, when the university had no idea of its dark history.
“She’s lovely, she’s been a valued part of our collection, but we’re happy to return her to where she belongs,” Dr Diana Burton, associate professor of classics, Greek and Latin told the Herald.
Dr Diana Burton and H.E. Cristiano Maggipinto with the marble bust at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington’s Classics Museum. Photo / Gerry Keating
The classics museum will continue to display the item for four more years on a loan to allow emerging scholars to learn more about Roman antiquities, and then the Italian Government will give the museum another item in its place.
“It would be nice not to have stolen property, but it’s a really great opportunity.”
Over the last few decades, the Italian Government has been hunting down stolen artefacts using seized Polaroid photos of looted items that have been sold around the world.
“[The Italian Government] identified ours and sent us a copy of the Polaroid, and it was clearly our head.”
Italian authorities matched a Polaroid of the bust to an image stored on the university’s database, with the digital storage system having been recently introduced to the museum.
On Monday, the Victoria University Classics Museum had a hand-over function to celebrate the item being repatriated to Italy with vice-chancellor Nic Smith and Italian Ambassador H.E. Cristiano Maggipinto.
Victoria University's Classics Museum is based on the Kelburn campus in the Old Kirk building. Photo / RNZ
As the marble bust was dug up illegally, there was no record of the archaeological context.
The bust is a head of a woman, , which Burton said would normally have been edited out.
“Presumably she has decided that she wants her wart to remain as part of her identity, which is quite nice.”
The item was most likely a whole-body, full-sized statue originally, Burton said.
Seeing the bright side of the situation, the lecturer planned to work this experience into her course on archaeological excavation later this year.
“I’ve been teaching about the black market almost since I first started at Victoria, so this adds a certain immediacy.”
Sammy Carter is a journalist for the New Zealand Herald covering news in the Wellington region. She has previously worked at the Rotorua Daily Post.
