Türkiye is used to asking Scandinavia for heads and receiving pumpkins. This time he hopes it will be different, because it is not an extradition, but a return, but they delay him.
After the US restored a splendid statue of Septimius Severus, many Turkish eyes fell on the only thing missing from their imperial nude, as well as full length. Head.
It was in March when the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) finally returned to Turkey three pieces on display, which its experts confirmed came from looting. These are already on display, along with a dozen restitutions, in the stupendous Antalya Archaeological Museum, a city famous for its beaches and extreme heat, which delight Russian tourists.
Among all of them, the exceptional 2.10 meter bronze sculpture of the founder of the Severa dynasty, who lived between the 2nd and 3rd centuries, stands out. However, this act of justice has spurred the Minister of Culture, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, to demand the full lot. Now all eyes are directed to Denmark, where a museum claimed, already in 1979, to be in possession of the lost head of Septimius Severus, corresponding to said torso.
However, after the claim, its manager, Rune Frederiksen, says he is not so sure. He is now asking for two years for an international commission of experts to rule. The puzzle continues.
The aforementioned Met had exhibited the statue for a dozen years, as an anonymous loan in its “Greco-Roman courtyard”. The date coincides with the death of a Swiss dealer who was once linked to the looting of the Bubon site. This former cult center of the imperial family, not far from present-day Antalia, was “cleansed” in 1967 by the concerted action of peasants and traffickers.
The Met, at the request of the Turkish embassy and the Manhattan prosecutor himself, ended up accepting that this landmark piece came from that looting of bronze statues, which had escaped the usual recasting. After going through an intermediary in Izmir, in 1968 they were already in Boston. Today there would be Bubon pieces in half a dozen American museums.
But where exactly is the head of this Septimius Severus? Well, quite possibly in Dante’s square, in Copenhagen. In the Gliptoteka Carlsberg, founded 125 years ago by the collector Carl Jacobsen, which gives its name to the famous beer brand, created by his father.
The Danish museum bought the piece in question in 1970, “on the antiques market”. Shortly after, one of his experts traveled to Indianapolis, where the “torso of Septimius Severus” was on display on loan. His impression was that it was one with the newly acquired head. So much so that, although the Gliptoteka was unable to buy it, it was borrowed in 1979, displaying it with its head superimposed, albeit not very convincingly. However, the most eminent Turkish archaeologist, Jale Inan, took the pairing for granted and blamed the wrong angle for comic effect.
For its part, the Turkish state, in those years of high tension in the streets, did not lose sleep over the whereabouts of a Greco-Roman emperor.
But eighteen hundred years after his death, past and present intertwine. Türkiye is today the best-connected country by air with Africa. And Septimius Severus is, not in vain, the first Roman emperor of African origin. He was also born a stone’s throw from Tripoli, where Turkey plays strong. And his fratricidal son, Caracalla, died in what is now Türkiye.
Ersoy, by the way, was one of the only two ministers not headed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his last reshuffle. That this tourist businessman is the Minister of Culture says a lot about the place he occupies in the Islamo-Democratic government. On the other hand, he more subscribed to the word than to the image –unlike the opposition–, although he makes an exception with the patrimony. And if it is necessary to pretend that the emperor is not naked, he is done. Who says that the imperial cult is extinct?
