The journey of these objects, passed through the hands of shipwreck looters, excavators and unscrupulous merchants, ends with a solemn restitution.
What is the relationship between a skull from the catacombs of Paris, a Roman coin sunk off the coast of Corsica and five gold bars that sank on the coast of Brittany? Sold illegally in the United States, these remains were seized by the American authorities, who returned them to France. The solemn restitution ceremony was held on Wednesday in Washington, in the presence of the French ambassador to the United States, Philippe Etienne, and a senior director of the fight against American crime, Steve Francis. The two officials unveiled the exhibits on a display and described the odyssey of these mystery-shrouded possessions, decreed “inalienablewho should never have left French territory. “It is unacceptable that cultural property can be stolen and trafficked and it is one of our common priorities between the United States and France.“, explained to AFP Philippe Étienne.
The gold bars were part of the cargo of the Prince de Conty, a ship of the French East India Company. Returning from the Far East, this sailboat had sunk body and goods on December 3, 1746 near Belle-Ile-en-Mer. Of the 229 men on board, only 45 survived. The wreck submerged by 10 to 15 meters deep had fallen into oblivion until its discovery in 1974 by a teacher who had studied the archives. Unscrupulous divers then ransacked the underwater site, taking over the ingots. Five of these lots reappeared in the catalog of a California auction house, which planned to put them up for auction in early 2018.
For the Department of Underwater and Underwater Archaeological Research (Drassm), the service responsible for inventorying the submerged heritage in France, there is no doubt that these ingots stamped with Chinese characters came from the Prince of Conty. Alerted by the French authorities, the American police then intervened.
Irrefutable evidence
«The evidence provided by the French state was irrefutable“, told AFP special agent David Keller, specializing in cultural property. These ingotswere used as currency by China to buy goods from France in international trade. The hallmarks on their surface identify the people who made these ingots in the Qing Dynasty, so they condense a lot of historyadded the American investigator.
Is the small gold coin returned to France much older, dating back to the time of the decadence of the Roman Empire: it was part of the fabulous sunken treasure of Lava, a cargo that sank 1700 years ago in a gulf near Ajaccio. The site, discovered or rediscovered in 1985 by brothers fishing for sea urchins, was plundered in a clandestine manner by these same Corsicans taken by the gold fever, who stood out by leading the way thanks to the resale of their booty. For numismatists, the Lava hoard is one of the most important discoveries in history. Some extremely rare pieces are estimated at several hundred thousand euros each. The one returned to France was found after being put up for sale in 2013 by a merchant in Los Angeles.
The skull was located in a shipment of antiques imported by a second-hand dealer in Houston, Texas. The examination of the bone box by an expert and the work of American investigators have made it possible to establish with certainty that this vestige was part of the largest ossuary in the world, the catacombs of Paris, housing the remains of several million Parisians in d old quarry galleries. Why such mobilization for a skull of an anonymous person, who died in the 18th century or before?
«It is a human remains but which belongs just as much – I was going to say perhaps even more – to our historyexplains Ambassador Philippe Étienne. “It is no coincidence that the catacombs are among the most visited sites, the most famous in Paris and even in the whole world. It’s also part of our culture».