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British Museum gems for sale on eBay – how a theft was exposed

The two clues that helped a Danish gem collector with a photographic memory crack open the case.

The museum has since said in documents filed at the High Court that it believes the cameo had been taken from a storeroom in the Greece and Rome department by a senior curator, Dr Peter Higgs, just a week before it appeared for sale. He matched the image in the book to a photograph on his computer hard drive of an olive-green gem fragment that he had previously been offered for sale by a British dealer called Malcolm Hay. “[Rolf] then said to me, ‘Ittai, you do realise that is the name of a curator in the British Museum Greece and Rome department, don't you?’ And I remember that distinctly, my hair stood on end, I was absolutely shocked by this.”

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