Over 500 California Armenians have signed a petition demanding that a bronze head of the goddess Anahit now in the possession of the British Museum be sent to Armenia.

The petition was launched by Gevorg Martirosyan who, as a student in England, would visit the British Museum and view the bronze head on display.

While Gevorg thanks the British for preserving this priceless Armenian artefact, he believes that the remains must be relocated to Armenia’s Museum of History.

Armen Ashotyan, Armenia’s Minister of Education and Science, has launched a similar campaign to get the bust to Armenia.

Gevorg says that he tried to get in touch with Minister Ashotyan in order to inform him of the California petition and received an answer in an undecipherable computer font. He wrote back requesting a revised response but hasn’t received anything yet.

Gevorg hopes that the reason is because the minister is just too busy and isn’t giving him the brush-off. The California Armenian says it’s vital for the minister to reach out to the young people in the diaspora for the campaign to be effective.

Minister Ashotyan’s initiative wasn’t well received in Armenia. Many say that Armenia has no legal recourse to demand the return of the bust and that it never belonged to any Armenian government in the first place. Others have cited the futile attempts of Greece to have the British Museum return the Elgin Marbles.

The bronze head was found in 1872 in the town of Sadak (ancient Satala) in north-eastern Turkey and was finally purchased by the British Museum.

Gevorg responds to the naysayers by citing the example of Egypt, which has successfully fought for the return of some 5,000 cultural artifacts from around the world, 400 of which came from the British Museum.