India-Pakistan link to Mohenjodaro necklace
Archaeologists want to reunite two pieces of 4,000-year old artifact
By : pramila krishnan
Update: 2014-08-03 05:11 GMT
Chennai: What successive political leaders on both sides of the border have failed, a bunch of archaeologists are hoping to achieve: India-Pakistan bhai, bhai. To start with, they would like to unite the two pieces of a priceless 4,000-year-old necklace of precious stones that had been unearthed during the 1920 Mohenjodaro excavation and broken into two bits for sharing by the two countries post-1947.
“More than 12,000 objects had been excavated in Mohanjodaro and kept in Delhi. After the independence, Pakistan made a claim since the site fell in that country. After many negotiations, it was decided to share the objects and that’s how this necklace came to be broken into two. It would be nice if it is now reunited and shared by the two countries by exhibiting in their museums by rotation”, archaeologist Ms Nayanjot Lahiri, professor in the Delhi University, told DC.
She said India and Pakistan could emulate U.S and France in dealing with the two pieces of the sculpture of ‘St.Christopher Carrying the Christ Child with the Globe of the World’, done by an Italian sculptor in the 1500s. One piece of the sculpture was at the National Gallery of Art, Washington while the other was at the Louvre in Paris. Both were mistaken for independent scupltures.
“The National Gallery gave its piece to Louvre on permanent loan, where it is on exhibition since 1973, on the principle that the aesthetic value of the reunited sculpture is far greater than the value of the dismembered parts.