| Wednesday 6 January 2010 (20 Muharram 1431) Abdul Jalil Mustafa | Arab News |
AMMAN: Jordan has asked Canada to seize the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls that were being displayed by Israel at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Maha Khatib was quoted as saying on Tuesday. “The government, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has requested Canada to take custody of the scrolls,” Khatib told the Jordan Times. She cited the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, to which both Jordan and Canada are signatories. Khatib said that Israel took the artefacts from a museum in East Jerusalem which the Jewish state seized from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war. “Claiming these scrolls belonged to Israel is illegitimate, as is the occupation of Jerusalem, as far as Jordan is concerned,” she said. Khatib pointed out that the government possessed evidence proving that the scrolls belonged to Jordan. “We have documents to prove that we bought these scrolls from Bedouins living in the area who discovered them,” she said. The Palestinian Authority has also reportedly requested custody of the scrolls. The Director of the Palestinian Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Department Hamdan Taha said the artefacts “are an integral part of the Palestinian heritage.” According to the Ontario museum’s website, the Dead Sea Scrolls are widely considered among the greatest archaeological finds of the past century. They include the earliest written sources for Old Testament, as well as other less well known writings. |
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