Tajik president wants UK to return 'Oxus treasure'

Tajikistan’s president wants Britain to return a British Museum collection of ancient gold and silver objects known as the Oxus treasure.

“The president has given orders to take the necessary steps to return the most valuable artefacts of the Amu Darya treasure,” President Emomali Rakhmon’s office said in a statement.

Amu Darya is the modern name of the Oxus River, which marks the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border.

The Oxus treasure consists of about 170 objects, including vessels, model chariots and figures, armlets, seals, finger-rings, dedicatory plaques and coins, dating from the 5th and 4th centuries BC – a time when the Achaemenid Persian empire stretched from Egypt and the Aegean to Afghanistan and the Indus Valley.

The Oxus treasure was found in the 19th century on the territory of modern Tajikistan and was believed to be sold to merchants who then sold it to British subjects in bazaars in Rawalpindi, which at that time was part of India.