Jordan recovers artefacts held by Israel since 1967

The Department of Antiquities has recovered from Israel hundreds of clay artefacts after 44 years, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. The agency quoted acting Director General of the General Antiquities Department Fares Hmoud as saying Monday that the 620 artefacts, which date back to the early Bronze Age, were in Jordan in the 1960s before they were lent to an American archaeologist. They had been discovered in an area in southern Jordan Valley, Hmoud said. After that the items were taken to the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem for examination, but the 1967 war prevented their return to the Kingdom after Israel occupied East Jerusalem, which was then under Jordanian rule. The artefacts were not the only outstanding archaeological issue between Jordan and Israel. A major one has to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls. Israel took the scrolls from a museum in Jerusalem, during the 1967 war, which resulted in the occupation of the Holy City and the rest of the West Bank. Jordan has announced that it has documents proving that the scrolls belong to the Kingdom and Israel is illegitimately holding them under the international law. Authorities, officials have stated, bought these scrolls from bedouins living in the area northwest of the Dead Sea who discovered them.