The employee fired by the British Museum after the discovery of stolen and damaged pieces is one of the museum’s experts in ancient Greece, a specialist in Greek sculpture and the Hellenistic period, who had worked at the institution for thirty years, the newspaper “The Times” revealed on Thursday.

The museum, which houses some of the most important archaeological collections in the world, with large sections devoted to Greece and Pharaonic Egypt, reported on Wednesday the loss of jewelry, artifacts made of gold, semi-precious stones and glass objects dating back to the 15th century. century BC

The trustees of the British Museum were extremely concerned to learn this year that “objects from their collection had been stolen,” Georges Osborne, president of the British Museum, known for housing the Rosetta Stone or parts of the British Museum, said in a statement. frieze. of the Parthenon.

According to Osborne, priority was given to “finding the stolen parts” and concrete actions were taken: “We called the police, we imposed emergency measures to strengthen security, an independent investigation was launched to find out what happened and to learn from it and we have used all available disciplinary powers against the person we deem responsible.”

According to the institution, most of the “missing, stolen or damaged” items are “small pieces” that were stored in warehouses. They had not been publicly displayed recently and were kept “primarily for research purposes”.

Among them are “gold jewellery, semi-precious stones or glassware” made between the 15th century BC and the 19th century AD, he specified.

for sale online

For its part, “De Telegraaf” assured that some of these objects, which were not on public display, but were part of collections accessible only to academics and researchers, disappeared from the museum’s warehouses for a long period of years , and some of them “appeared for sale on eBay as early as 2016”.

Both “The Times” and “The Telegraph” point out how the person accused of these kidnappings Peter Higgs, a 56-year-old doctor of archeology who started working there in 1993 and has written the guides that accompanied some of the major exhibits organized by the British Museum in recent times.

One of his sons, Greg Higgs, 21, told both papers that his father was “devastated” and defended his innocence.

The archaeologist worked at the museum for more than three decades “without incident,” his son stressed. “They trusted him for a lot of things. And suddenly I don’t know what has changed. He is devastated because this is his life’s work. In fact, I’ve never met anyone so passionate about what they did. He is a world expert in his field,” he added.

The British Museum has explained that the London Police Department of Economic Crimes is investigating the eventsin which no arrests have been made so far, and has suggested that it will take legal action against the person they believe responsible for the robberies.

The collections of eight million works include Egyptian mummies, African sculptures and pottery from the Roman Empire.