A Czech military plane in Damascus to transport destroyed antiquities in order to carry out restoration and improvement operations

 

 

On 2.06.2022, a military plane belonging to the Czech Republic landed at Damascus International Airport with the aim of transporting “destroyed” Syrian artifacts within the agreement signed between the National Museum in Damascus and the Prague National Museum in order to carry out restoration and improvement operations, due to the presence of the necessary technology and expertise required for that in the Czech Republic.

After the completion of the restoration, these pieces will be displayed in the Prague National Museum for a period of time, and then returned to the Syrian Arab Republic.

The transfer was also attended by the director of the National Museum in Damascus, in addition to representatives of the Ministry of Culture and the General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums, and from the Czech side, the director and deputy director of the Prague National Museum and the director of the Military Museum in Prague, in addition to the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Czech Republic in Damascus Eva Filipi and members of the Czech Embassy in Damascus.

After the artifacts arrived in Prague, protocols for receiving 20 Syrian artifacts were announced and signed in the workshops of the Czech National Museum in the presence of a representative of the Syrian Embassy in Prague.

The Director of the Czech National Museum, Michal Lukeš, announced in a press conference that accompanied the handover that this agreement is a very important event, and is the culmination of the existing cooperation with the General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums in Syria for five years, and that an exhibition of these pieces will be organized in Prague to display it in front of museum visitors before returning it to Syria.