It’s Friday, but this should not go uncovered until after the weekend, or even tomorrow morning. The Associated Press is reporting that about 60 priceless antiquities have been stolen from a small museum near the ancient site of the Olympics:
Two masked gunmen stormed into a small museum at the birthplace of the ancient Olympics in southern Greece on Friday, smashing display cases with hammers and making off with dozens of antiquities up to 3,200 years old, authorities said….
…Police said about 60 artifacts were stolen by the robbers, who tied up the only site guard, a 48-year-old woman.
Culture Minister Pavlos Geroulanos submitted his resignation after the morning robbery, but it was unclear whether it had been accepted by Prime Minister Lucas Papademos. Geroulanos traveled on Friday to ancient Olympia, some 210 miles (340 kilometers) southwest of Athens….
…A culture ministry official said the stolen antiquities dated from the 9th to the 4th centuries B.C., apart from the seal-ring which dates to Late Bronze Age Mycenaean times and was found in another part of southern Greece.
“They took small objects made of bronze and pottery — figurines, vases and lamps — and the ring,” the official said. “The artifacts were behind reinforced glass panels which fracture like a car windscreen, and the thieves grabbed whatever small objects they could reach through the holes they opened.”
Greek officials blamed cutbacks required by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund for the scant security — a handy excuse. Nonetheless, the AP said it was the second major museum breakin in as many months.
Read more here from AP and here from the BBC. We’ll need to learn more before we can truly judge what’s happening in Greece, I think.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of AP