Forces loyal to Muammar Qadhafi stole ancient Roman artefacts when they fled Tripoli, bundled them into sacks and planned to sell them abroad, Libya's new rulers said on Saturday as they displayed the haul for the first time since its recovery.
The artefacts - a collection of 17 stone heads, most the size of tennis balls, and terracotta fragments dating from the second or third centuries A.D. - were recovered on August 23 when anti-Qadhafi fighters intercepted a convoy of loyalists heading south from Tripoli.
"All of them (the artefacts) date back to Roman times but with very strong local influence," said Saleh Algabe, director of the Antiquities Department in the new Libyan government. "They were captured in cars belonging to Qadhafi militia which shows they were probably planning to smuggle them out of the country to fund their fight," against the new Libyan leadership, Algabe told a news conference. The carved stone heads in the collection appear to have been detached from statues. A section of a tile with what looked like an image of a dog decorated on it was also displayed.
The items were shown in public for the first time on Saturday at a ceremony when the government's security committee handed them over to the antiquities department. Libya was home to thriving Roman outposts beginning around the first century A.D. One Roman emperor, Septimius Severus, was born in Leptis Magna, on the site of the modern Libyan town of Khoms.
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