Americans honored for returning Saudi treasures

Seven US citizens have taken the initiative to return a number of Saudi artifacts, which they possessed for decades and were of great value, to the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA).
The Americans were copiously honored by Prince Sultan bin Salman, SCTA president, at the opening ceremony of the three-month-long exhibition “Roads of Arabia: Archaeology and History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia”, which was opened on Nov. 15.
The citizens who returned the artifacts are “Sons of Aramco”, said Janet Smith, wife of the US Ambassador to the Kingdom James Smith. “They were born and lived in the Kingdom with their parents, who were working for Saudi Aramco, and are now part of the Alumni Association Aramco families and retirees, which includes people between the ages of 5-90 years,” she said.
Barbara Denis Martin, one of the honorees, said that she was born in the Kingdom and lived there until she was 20, so she considers it to be her second homeland.
“When I was a child, I used to go camping with my family out of the urban area. The desert was fascinating with its wild flora and fauna. Moreover, there were wide ranges of thousand-year pottery spread. We used to spend hours exploring, and managed to find many artifacts that emerged due to wind erosion. We could gather a collection of 60-70 pottery and glass pieces, some intact, others shriveled. We were aware of their archaeological value, but they wouldn’t be given much appreciation by nationals back then, so we kept them at our homes. Years later, we went back to America and took them to boastfully show them in our America-based houses,” Martin declared.
Louis Wolfram, speaking about her story with Saudi monuments, said: “I was accustomed to collecting pottery items from the Kingdom’s prairies, where I used to go to on excursions when I was a child. One day I went with my family to Jubail on a trip, and I found there a green pottery piece that was half sunk in the sand, so I dug it out and then removed more sand layers in the same location to find a two-handled ceramic pot. We took both pieces with us home and kept them in care for years.”
Lucile Lynn, from Florida, recalled her memories in the Kingdom, when they used to spend hours with her two daughters out of Aramco employees’ residential area. They were hiking around freely, when they found a number of historical artifacts.
About retrieving the artifacts, Barbara Martin said: “I was not aware of the real number of all artifacts we found, until I visited my father’s house last year to clean it and found out that they were too many, feeling happy that I could get them back home.”
Arthur Clark, associate editor of Aramco World magazine, said: “Our invitation for retrieval of Saudi artifacts was widely responded, encouraged by the initiative of Prince Sultan bin Salman. We could contact Aramco sons and organized several meetings with them to inform them about the initiative for returning and restoring these artifacts to be displayed in the Kingdom’s under-construction museums.”
This invitation was addressed to Saudis and non-Saudis all over the world to restore these monuments to their homeland, Clark said.
“Sons of Aramco” could take care of them for years before the modern Saudi urban development. Now, with all the regulations and laws issued by the SCTA, theses artifacts will be well appreciated and taken more care of in their homeland.
The agreement got its fruit by encouraging numerous governmental associations and individuals to retrieve more than 3,000 artifacts from within the country and more than 14,000 from all over the world. The returned treasures were exhibited in the Riyadh National Museum, as a feature of an exhibition was held under the aegis of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah.