Libya recovers colonial wolf statue sold as scrap and found on a farm
Libyan authorities recovered a large bronze wolf statue that once sat atop a pillar in central Benghazi. The wolf statue disappeared decades ago. It was recently found on a farm. A tip led authorities to the colonial-era statue.
The farm’s owner, Saied Mohammed Bourabida said he bought the statue from a scrap metal yard because he liked the way it looked.
“I remembered this statue in its position near the port from when I was young. I had a smelting workshop and when I saw it by chance at the scrap dealer’s I liked its shape and the quality of work so I bought it,” Bourabida said.
Bourabida kept the statue, a replica of the famous Capitoline Wolf sculpture that depicts a legendary scene of ancient Rome, in plain view under a spreading tree next to the terrace of his house.
Khaled al-Aqouri, head of the tourism and antiquities department in the Benghazi police, said he was confident that Bourabida had not known that it was still public property.
Wolf statue’s Roman roots
Italian colonial authorities erected the statue in the new Benghazi city center they were building in the 1930s, promoting a connection between the ancient Roman settlement of Libya and their modern colonial rule over the country.
After Libya won independence, the authorities removed the wolf from its pillar. It disappeared following Muammar Gaddafi’s seizure of power in 1969, a revolutionary period when relics of foreign colonial rule were banished from sight.
At some point, the statue lost its front legs as well as the figures of Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome who were said to have been raised by a wolf.
It is now outside the antiquities department in Benghazi, propped on concrete blocks while it awaits possible restoration.
