Golden Treasures of Pharaoh Ramses Arrive in Sydney miragenews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from miragenews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Academic tussle as ancient relics from black market brought into country
Weâre sorry, this service is currently unavailable. Please try again later.
Dismiss
By Michaela Boland
Save
Normal text size
Advertisement
A pair of 2000-year-old bark manuscripts that promise to unlock some mysteries of the birth of Buddhism have turned up in Australia, sparking an ethical and legal debate about whether they should be here.
University of Sydney academic Dr Mark Allon sourced the ancient relics on the black market and then in 2019 established a crowdfunding campaign, seeking to raise $30,000 to fund research into them.
After concerns were raised about the relicsâ provenance and the ethics of studying black market antiquities, the university launched an investigation and suspended the campaign, which had raised $26,000.