GAZIANTEP: Missing fragments from one of Turkey’s most striking ancient treasures, the haunting “Gypsy Girl” mosaic, have returned home more than half a century after they were plundered and smuggled to the US. On Saturday, the returned pieces went on display alongside the nearly 2,000-year-old mosaic of the girl.

Turkish archaeologists discovered the mosaic 20 years ago during an excavation of the old city of Zeugma, founded by one of Alexander the Great’s generals, near the modern city of Gaziantep. They also realised that several accompanying pieces had already been looted. Those pieces had been smuggled out of the country in the 1960s and bought by Bowling Green State University in Ohio in the US, which displayed them until 2012 when their true provenance was established and Turkey asked for their return.

The university initially asked Turkey to buy them back, a request which Ankara rejected, according to Sedat Gulluoglu, Turkey’s tourism ministry attaché in the United States. After more than five years of talks, an agreement was signed for their return. The city of Zeugma, on the River Euphrates, flourished under Greek and then Roman rule before it was destroyed in war in the third century. The 15-square-metre Gypsy Girl mosaic is the most prominent symbol of that history.

On Saturday, the pieces were put on exhibit at the Zeugma Mosaic Museum in Gaziantep in a ceremony to celebrate their return. Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, who lifted a cover to unveil the mosaic as visitors poured in to see the artwork, said the returned pieces would greatly contribute to tourism in Turkey and Gaziantep. “It is a very important day for Turkey. A six-year process has been completed and our pieces have returned where they were born,” Ersoy said.

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2018