Reposted from the Times of India

About 140 years after a British archaeologist discovered a 2,000-year-old sarcophagus at Pallavaram, the six-feet long artifact has been found smashed at Government Museum in Egmore.

The ancient earthen tomb with 10 legs was one of the first major discoveries made by British archaeologist Alexander Rea in 1888, which revealed the existence of a megalithic culture in Pallavaram on the outskirts of Chennai. 

The country's second oldest museum has no record of the sarcophagus, though the transportation of the antique piece from hillocks of Pallavaram to the Government Museum was documented by Alexander Rea. Museum sources told TOI that the sarcophagus was broken more than ten years ago. 

A museum curator said, “Once during a visit to the museum strong room, I found shreds of terracotta which appeared to be broken legs of a sarcophagus. After some inquiries I found the piece broke when someone tried to lift it.”In the absence of any record of the sarcophagus, the museum made no attempt to repair the broken piece or to ascertain the object. “We do not have a sarcophagus of this size in our inventory of prehistory artifacts,” said the curator.

The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal narrates how the first superintendent of the southern circle of ASI, Alexander Rea, moved the sarcophagus from Pallavaram to the Egmore museum by rail and cart in 1888, when modern transportation was a rarity in the country. “We have no record of the sarcophagus from Pallavaram,” said the curator. The museum, however, has a sarcophagus that, as records show, was discovered by Alexander Rea at Perumbarai of Kancheepuram district.

Mystery shrouds past in sealed strongrooms of govt museum

That the government museum in Egmore has a jaw-dropping array of about 11,000 ancient and priceless artifacts on display is a given. But what is not known is that the building sits over nearly 1 lakh items of civilizational and cultural importance, and that all of them are kept in strongrooms, a senior museum official not willing to be named said.

The museum administration has kept every small and big ageless curio relating to Tamil civilization – ranging from stone tools used during prehistoric period to iconic bronze idols of the Cholas – in these sealed rooms.

While the collection is an archaeologist’s dream, the way they are kept away from neutral scrutiny must be a conservationist’s nightmare.

Recently, museum managers had smashed a more than 2,300-year-old sarcophagus inside one of the strongrooms. The incident came to light only after TOI shot probing queries to authorities.

When TOI visited the museum two weeks ago, several stone idols and wood carvings — some from the Pallava period — were found kept in a small shed behind the museum galleries, shrouded in a thick blanket of dust. Besides this, more than 200 antique pieces of different sizes were seen bundled over each other in a dingy room.

Drawing inferences from all these facts it cannot be said with certainty that the artifacts in the strongrooms are well-preserved.

Museum authorities, however, said every effort was being made to conserve the artifacts in three strongrooms. The claim does not cut ice with heritage enthusiasts.

S Vijaykumar, co-founder of Singapore-based India Pride Project, an organisation working towards retrieval of stolen idols from India, said as per media reports, there were at least seven theft attempts at the museum in the last 20 years.

“Despite these break-ins, museum authorities said nothing was lost except for a replica of a Roman coin from the numismatic section. (The robbers exited via the bronze gallery). A recent theft was related to meteorite stones kept on display. A thorough audit of the acquisition register and physical tallying have to be done,” he said.

Just two armed policemen guard the museum’s bronze gallery. Sources said the museum is under the surveillance of 122 CCTV cameras, adding it has a minimal presence of private security guards after the visiting hours.

Though museum curators claim an annual audit is conducted to ensure artefacts are intact, former archaeology officer and secretary of Madurai-based Pandya Nadu Centre for Historical Research C Santhalingam wondered why the audit report has never been made public. “It is a government museum and the list of entire collection at the strongrooms should be in the public domain,” he said.

When contacted, Pinky Jowel, the director (in-charge) of the museum, said an app was being developed to promote the facility globally. “It will have security features to count the number of times a person visits the gallery. This would give a clue on the purpose of their visit,” she added. 

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