France Repatriates Artifacts to Pakistan

News July 3, 2019

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PARIS, FRANCE—Reuters reports that the government of France has handed over more than 400 artifacts, including terracotta busts, vases, urns, and goblets, to officials at Pakistan's embassy in Paris. French customs officers seized the objects at Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport in 2006 and 2007. Scholars at France’s National Center for Scientific Research identified the artifacts, which have been dated to the second and third millennium B.C., and are believed to have been looted from cemeteries in Pakistan’s Indus Valley. “We believe, today, that a part of Pakistan’s heritage is coming back to its homeland,” said Muhammad Amjad Aziz Qazi, the embassy’s deputy head of mission and charge d’affaires. For more, go to “Burials and Reburials in Ancient Pakistan.”

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