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With no government funds to assist them, Greece's museums face a difficult task to protect national treasures like this 5th century B.C. kylix with a depiction of a Greek hoplite battling a Persian warrior. National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Public domain image in the USA.

Officials: 77 artifacts confirmed missing after Olympia museum heist

Catherine Saunders-Watson
Catherine Saunders-Watson
With no government funds to assist them, Greece's museums face a difficult task to protect national treasures like this 5th century B.C. kylix with a depiction of a Greek hoplite battling a Persian warrior. National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Public domain image in the USA.
With no government funds to assist them, Greece’s museums face a difficult task to protect national treasures like this 5th century B.C. kylix with a depiction of a Greek hoplite battling a Persian warrior. National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Public domain image in the USA.

ATHENS (AFP) – Greek officials on Monday said robbers who raided a museum in ancient Olympia last week had made off with dozens of artifacts including items dating back more than 3,000 years.

Police and the culture ministry released a list of 77 items stolen on Friday from the Ancient Olympic Games museum in Olympia, southwest Greece, a higher number than originally estimated.

They include a 3,300-year-old gold ring, a bronze statuette of a victorious athlete, a 2,400-year-old oil jar, clay lamps, bronze tripods and miniature chariot wheels, and dozens of idols of charioteers, horses and bulls.

Two clay goblets and a drinking cup were also smashed during the robbery and left behind, the authorities said.

Two masked men took advantage of the fact that the museum was unguarded for an hour early Friday. They knocked out the alarm, then overpowered the building’s sole female guard when she arrived for her shift.

The incident prompted Culture Minister Pavlos Geroulanos to submit his resignation to Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, who has yet to accept it.

Greece, rich in archaeological heritage, has been targeted by antiquity smugglers for decades. But the financial crisis rocking the country has now brought hundreds of staff layoffs among archaeologists and guards, leaving musuems vulnerable to theft.

The robbery in Olympia, some 300 kilometres (190 miles) southwest of Athens in the Peloponnese peninsula, was the second museum hit by thieves in a month. It follows the theft in January of a painting personally gifted by Spanish-born master Pablo Picasso to Greece from the Athens National Gallery.

In that case, the thief or thieves knocked out the alarm system and forced open a balcony door at the back of the building, which is located across from one of Athens top hotels.

The gallery was on reduced security staffing owing to a strike.

Two other important artworks, one by Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian and another by 16th-century Italian painter Guglielmo Caccia, better known as Moncalvo, were also taken.

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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

With no government funds to assist them, Greece's museums face a difficult task to protect national treasures like this 5th century B.C. kylix with a depiction of a Greek hoplite battling a Persian warrior. National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Public domain image in the USA.
With no government funds to assist them, Greece’s museums face a difficult task to protect national treasures like this 5th century B.C. kylix with a depiction of a Greek hoplite battling a Persian warrior. National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Public domain image in the USA.