First estimate of stolen artefacts is given by the British Museum

According to the board chair of trustees, about 2,000 things are thought to have vanished from storage.

George Osborne, the chair of the British Museum’s board of trustees, estimated that over 2,000 historical artefacts, estimated to be worth tens of millions of pounds, had been taken from the museum’s vault.

The London-based organisation disclosed earlier this month that a collection of jewellery stones that ranged in date from the 15th century BC to the 1800s had vanished from storage, where they had been stored for use in research and education.

“I’ll estimate that number at around 2,000. But I must admit, that figure is very tentative,” Osborne said in a statement to the BBC on Saturday.

Although some goods had been found, he continued, it was only “a silver lining to a dark cloud.”

Osborne conceded that the museum’s reputation had been hurt, but insisted that the stolen artefacts were “small pieces of jewellery, gems, and bits of gold,” not “the incredible items that we have on display in public.” The museum has improved security, he continued, and staff members are concentrating on “cleaning up the mess” and categorising the missing artefacts.

The museum’s director, Hartwig Firscher, announced his resignation on Friday after acknowledging that not enough had been done to stop the theft.

The first time the custodians were informed that objects from a collection bequeathed to the museum in 1814 had been listed for sale on Ebay was in February 2021, when antiques dealer Ittai Gradel submitted a notice. At the time, Fischer called the allegations “an outright lie,” but later stated that “our investigation concluded that those items were all accounted for.”

The British Museum’s security has been called “incredibly poor” by former curators.

Greece has re-initiated requests for the Parthenon Marbles to be returned, claiming that the British Museum can no longer claim that “Greek cultural heritage is more protected” there than in Greece in light of the crime. The Parthenon Marbles were taken from Athens in the 19th century. However, citing legal obstacles, Britain has declined to return the sculptures.