Echoes of Elgin Marbles: Turkey asks UK to return ancient sculpture

Turkey's government is calling on the United Kingdom to return the head of an ancient marble statue taken more than a century ago.

The object, currently in the stores of London's Victoria & Albert museum, is, says a museum spokesperson, a "life-size marble head of a child, with curling hair, broken off at the neck."

The head was snapped off a sarcophagus excavated in Anatolia (present-day Turkey) in 1882 by a British archaeologist named Sir Charles Wilson, who then covered the tomb over again. He took the head to England and his family gave it to the museum in 1933.

The tomb to which the head belongs, the 3rd century A.D. Sidamara Sarcophagus, was re-discovered in 1898 and currently resides in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum....