Among the dozens of objects that the government of Turkey is
asking American museums to return are 40 Byzantine relics at
Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks Museum. The silver and gold
liturgical objects known as the Sion Treasure consist of plates,
candlesticks, crosses and plaques. Some 40 pieces of the
treasure are at Dumbarton Oaks, while another 10 or so are at
the Antalya Museum in Turkey, with a few more said to be in
private collections. There does not appear to be much doubt that
the treasure was looted and smuggled out of Turkey in 1963 —
decades after the nation’s patrimony law made such acts illegal.
Dumbarton Oaks’ own publication of the Sion Treasure suggests as
much repeatedly. In 1986, Dumbarton Oaks organized a symposium
about the treasure at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, which
resulted in a 1992 book, “Ecclesiastical silver plate in 6th
Century Byzantium,” edited by the museum’s Byzantium curator
Susan A. Boyd. That publication includes this photograph of the
looter’s hole where the