Ittai Gradel, the Israel-born Danish gem expert who alerted the British Museum to the theft of thousands of antiquities from its collection after he discovered them for sale on eBay, died on April 28 of renal cancer. He was sixty-one. Days before his death, British Museum officials visited him in hospice and presented him with a rarely awarded medal for his service to the institution. Gradel told BBC culture and media editor Katie Razzal that he found it “a bit annoying” that he would die before the case was resolved.
Gradel, who specialized in Greco-Roman engraved gems, first warned Jonathan Williams, then the museum’s deputy director, in early 2021 that artefacts from its holdings were being peddled for a pittance on eBay. He identified Peter Higgs, one of the world’s top authorities on ancient Greek and Mediterranean artifacts and a veteran curator at the museum, as the culprit and offered detailed evidence to support his findings. Williams promised an investigation but ceased communications. After months passed, Gradel contacted then-director Hartwig Fischer; this time he received a response from Williams, who assured him the collection was safe.
Two years later, in 2023, the museum fired Higgs after investigators found that the pseudonymous eBay account via which a piece of Roman jewelry was posted was connected to a PayPal account that in turn linked to an X account bearing Higgs’s real name. When the museum’s failure to act immediately following Gradel’s warnings...
The President of the Association of Yorubas in Diaspora, South Africa, Dr Olusola Agbeniyi, has asked the senator representing Edo North, Adams Oshiomhole, to desist from making what he described ...