Yemen Identifies 28 Allegedly Looted Artifacts in London

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. According to the General Authority for Antiquities and Museums in Yemen, 28 Yemeni artifacts held in London have been looted from their country of origin. Of these objects, eight were auctioned in early July by Bonhams and Apollo Art Auctions, and the remaining twenty were found in the collection of the British Museum. A release from the Yemen Authority states that the artifacts possessed by the British Museum include incense burners, seals, Musnad inscriptions, tablets and statues. The Authority continues to allege that the items were illegally acquired by British Colonel William Francis Prideaux, an administrator in the British colonial government of Aden, and Henry Oppenheimer, a famous British antiquities dealer who bequeathed his entire collection of Chinese and Japanese art to the British Museum. “Some of these pieces came into the British Museum through donation or purchase,” the Authority said in their release, adding that Colonel Prideaux’s son, “Lieutenant Lar Prideaux, sold a number of artifacts and coins to the British Museum in 1915.” The British Museum has an extensive catalogue of Ancient South Arabian artifacts; Ancient South Arabia, the museum explains, was centered around what is now modern day Yemen, but also included parts of southern Oman and Saudi Arabia. The British Museum’s collection of South Arabian artifacts indeed includes incense burners, tablets, altars and other ancient items that could be the ones referred to by the Yemen Authority. The eight objects offered at Bonhams and Apollo Art Auction House include statue heads, an inscription and tombstones. On July 2nd, Bonhams held an antiquities auction that included “A large South Arabian alabaster head of a man” and “A South Arabian alabaster head of a woman” for sale. Yemen’s General Authority for Antiquities and Museums has, to date, released 34 lists of Yemeni artifacts identified around the world as part of the country’s “Our Looted Heritage” project.