The Sassanid rock relief seized in England, which is supposed to be returned to the country in the coming months after seven years, had been smuggled from the UAE to London. Correspondence exchanged to return the Sassanian rock relief seized in England shows that this Iranian artifact was smuggled from the Emirates to London. According to the ISNA news agency, quoting informed sources, the Sassanid rock reliefs were illegally smuggled from the waters of southern Iran to the UAE and then sent to Britain from there.
In 2016, this rock relief was accidentally discovered in the cargo hold of a passenger plane at London’s Stansted Airport; as reported by the Guardian newspaper, British border patrol officers were suspicious of the sloppy packaging of this object, which was more than 1 meter in size. After initial examination, they handed it over to the British Museum.
Now, after nearly seven years have passed since the story was kept silent, at the same time as this relief was exhibited in the British Museum, John Simpson, the senior curator and archaeologist of the Middle East department of the British Museum, in an interview with the Guardian newspaper, gave the details of the discovery and seizure of the smuggled Sasanian relief.
Based on the explanations that Morteza Adibzadeh, the director general of the country’s museums, gave to the media, informal correspondence about the discovery and confiscation of this relief started between the British Museum and the director of the national museum of Iran, in mid-2016. It was after that that legal follow-up and official correspondence began It is believed that apart from the time-consuming process of legal pursuits for repatriation, the considerations of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts in extradition cases have prevented timely reporting.
Based on what was told to ISNA, in the correspondence that our Ministry of Foreign Affairs had for follow-up and return of this relief to Iran, it is now clear that the Sassanid figure was smuggled to the UAE from the southern borders, by sea and most likely using a barge. And from there, it was sent by air to Europe and London.
Based on the correspondence that has taken place so far and according to the comments of the experts of the British Museum who have examined this relief, the area of removal and separation of this relief, the time of stealing and taking it out of the country, as well as the identity of the sender, after nearly 7 years since the seizure of this relief, is not yet clarified. According to Adibzadeh, the director general and officials of the British Museum have informed that this case has been investigated by Interpol and the National Crime Agency, but no one has yet been arrested in this connection.
It is also said that this relief has most likely not been stolen from the Sassanian sites that have been identified in Iran so far. The Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts has yet to receive a report of such a theft. However, the senior curator and archaeologist of the Middle East department of the British Museum have suggested that “this relief was carved from a rock in Shiraz.”
This relief has no writing or inscription, so it took more work for British Museum archaeologists to identify more details of this sculpture. However, the clothes and headdress of the sculpted man have led archaeologists to recognize that this figure was a high-ranking figure whose salutation gesture is a characteristic of Sasanian art.
However, before more explicit photos and videos of this relief were published, some archaeologists cast doubts on the authenticity of this work, mainly because they found the dimensions and shape of the frame of this work to be different from all Sasanian reliefs identified so far. However, according to the acting heads of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts, to verify the authenticity and clarify some dark aspects of this case, this petroglyph should be returned to Iran so that researchers and archaeologists can examine its details.
The Sassanid relief will be returned to Iran after three months of display in the British Museum. The presentation of this relief has already started in the British Museum.
