The operation looks like an adventure movie.
Several months of lengthy investigation, state-of-the-art synchronized action by the combined forces of the Police, Antiquities Authority and Israel Revenue Authority, a handful of warehouses surrounded and, finally , the long-awaited finds: craters, Greek red-figure kylixes, statuary fragments, Roman terracotta votive offerings, painted pottery, ornate heads, the funeral lapidary, precious stones inlaid with jewels, finely chiseled, old money as far as the eye can see and even up to a twisted column with its capital ... It is an understatement to say that the Antiquities Authority has won the jackpot.
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This important, carefully prepared crackdown took place on Monday in the Tel Aviv region, in central Israel, and delivered to investigators thousands of the most diverse antiques, not only from around the basin. Mediterranean - Greece, Italy, Africa, Levant - but also South America.
The estimated value of this teeming collection of seized coins is believed to exceed ten million shekels (approximately 2.55 million euros).
“
We were amazed to find thousands of artifacts in the warehouses and homes of suspects that deserve to be displayed in museums, including many rare finds dating back to the first millennium BC.
AD in the 11th century.
AD,
”said Amir Ganor, director of the Theft Prevention Unit at the Israel Antiquities Authority.
It would be one of the largest such operations to date in Israel.
Some of the objects found would come from a funeral context.
YULI SCHWARTZ / Israel Antiquities Authority
Most of these antiquities would come from the looting of tombs and necropolises.
The Israel Antiquities Authority has announced that it is working with Interpol and other international organizations to identify the various sites of provenance of the material found.
The booming traffic of cultural goods
Despite the blow dealt to the traffickers and the happy discovery of this treasure, the historical loss it represents is already a hard blow for specialists, all the material having been torn from the archaeological context necessary for its understanding. .
The last few years have seen a spectacular explosion in the illicit trafficking of antiques and cultural goods of all kinds, fueled by the increase in clandestine excavations, the development of digital commerce, the instability of certain regions (Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iraq ) and - in Europe - the resurgence of precariousness linked to the economic consequences of the Covid-19 crisis.
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Given its geographical location, Israel is today an important hub in the field of international trafficking in cultural goods and antiques.
The latter was ranked third in terms of volume in 2020, behind drug and arms trafficking.
