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Scattered across Australia are fragments of a mysterious ancient mosaic found in Palestine. It is revealed how the British Empire shaped the modern Middle East.
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00:00MUSIC
00:11Something inside this building
00:13drove a wedge between the British Empire
00:15and its distant island dominion, Australia.
00:20It is one of the most controversial artworks on this land.
00:25Because it's not from this land.
00:32In fact, this is arguably from the most contested region on Earth.
00:39And yet, for some reason,
00:41it's tucked in this obscure corner of the Australian War Memorial.
00:45It's almost like this mosaic.
00:48There's something to hide.
00:55In the days of the British Empire, things were taken.
00:58They usually ended up in museums and galleries with polite plaques.
01:03My name is Mark Fennell,
01:05and this is the not-so-polite story
01:08of how they really got there.
01:19Believe it or not, this is 258 metres below sea level.
01:24Welcome to Jericho,
01:25a Palestinian city deep in the Jordan Valley.
01:31Many say this is the oldest city in the world.
01:52and this is me, failing at a very ancient art.
01:56Oh!
01:57Be careful of your fingers.
01:59Jericho's.
01:59Yeah.
02:00I'm, yes.
02:01Yes.
02:01Like that?
02:02Yes.
02:05No.
02:06No.
02:06That one.
02:09So am I hired?
02:13Good start.
02:14Good start.
02:16Good start.
02:17This is Jericho's mosaic centre.
02:20And these are called tessera.
02:22Thousand of tessera you have to do that.
02:25Thousand.
02:25And this is, of course, it's important for making mosaics.
02:31I'm here to meet this man, Osama Hamdan.
02:35He's an archaeologist who can turn these pieces of rock into this.
02:45Elaborate, breathtaking mosaics have been made here for thousands of years,
02:50painstakingly constructed from millions of miniscule tessera
02:54that I just failed to make myself.
02:57From far away, mosaics, beautiful to see it from far away.
03:01Mm.
03:01And this is, of course, you have to use small, small.
03:05Look, to have these details, you have to spend a lot of time.
03:10I don't know, in Australia you have, no, you haven't mosaics.
03:13Yeah, we've got mosaics, they're just not as good as yours.
03:21Osama's life, like everyone's here, has been shaped by one of the most enduring border disputes
03:26of our time.
03:27For decades, both Jewish Zionists and Palestinian nationalists
03:32have claimed and fought over the same territory,
03:35often with devastating results.
03:37Yes, I live in Jerusalem, but I am originally from Palestine.
03:43Now, it's Israel.
03:46For that, you want to call it Israel, call it Palestine, call it Mozambique.
03:50So, it's one land.
03:52For that, sometimes I call it Holy Land.
03:58But the reason I'm in this Holy Land is this wall.
04:02And here it is.
04:03Yes.
04:04Oh, wow.
04:04It's amazing.
04:06Yes.
04:06This is Shalal mosaics.
04:08I never saw the original one.
04:10You've never, of course not, you've never seen the original.
04:13Into the side of Jericho's Mosaic Centre, Osama has built a replica of something called the Shalal Mosaic.
04:21It's a replica because the real one is in the walls of the Australian War Memorial.
04:27We decided to make a copy of a mosaic replica of this mosaic to show the people it's telling a
04:36story.
04:36The Palestinian people, they have to know their cultural heritage.
04:40At least they can see a copy.
04:42But we hope that it will be possible to see the original one,
04:48to be lucky to assume to see the original one.
04:52The real Shalal Mosaic was actually the floor of a Christian church made with over half a million tiny tessera.
04:59It dates back to the Byzantine Empire, which was a sort of evolution of the Roman Empire to the east.
05:05Whereas Osama's replica here was made for a very different purpose.
05:11It's a protest.
05:12I wanted to send a message.
05:16Where is our cultural heritage?
05:20People doesn't live just from water and bread.
05:24They need something else.
05:26And I wanted to tell the story of the Shalal Mosaic and the history of this place.
05:31And that is a history of war, of redrawn borders, and a fledgling nation inside the British Empire.
05:37But for Osama, over in Jericho, it's a story of a theft.
05:42They didn't own it.
05:43It's not theirs.
05:47So who is the they here?
05:50Who would dig up an ancient mosaic and why is it in Australia?
05:54And what does any of this have to do with the British Empire?
05:57The fact that there's a 6th century Byzantine mosaic in Australia alone is weird enough.
06:02But it actually gets stranger.
06:03So underneath the mosaic were buried bones.
06:09And those bones?
06:10You will never guess where they ended up.
06:21Meet Reverend Roger Kaye from St Anne's Anglican Church in Sydney, Australia.
06:25When he first took the job here, he realised that this building was holding something of a mystery.
06:32So, you're interested in the bones we've got which came from Shalal, yes?
06:38Yes, I am.
06:39Is that actually the Shalal Mosaic? Is that part of it?
06:43No, it is not. No.
06:44That was commissioned by a local artist.
06:47And she was asked to make a mosaic under which they could inter the bones of whoever they found in
06:55the sarcophagus underneath the floor of the mosaic in Shalal.
07:01Who do they think those bones actually belonged to?
07:03Well, at the time, I think some people thought they belonged to St George.
07:15According to the plaque here, the people that dug up the Shalal Mosaic saw that it had an inscription naming
07:20the builder of that church George.
07:23It was to do with the most pious George priest.
07:25And as they thought the bones must belong to George, they must be St George.
07:29Who is a fairly big deal in Christianity.
07:33Amongst other things, the patron saint dedicated to protecting England famously fought the odd dragon,
07:38which appears to have made the stained glass here at St Anne's.
07:42It would be quite a thing if St George was buried here in Sydney, wouldn't it?
07:47It would be. We could set up a shrine and charge money for people to come, couldn't we?
07:52It would also be a miracle.
07:58The historic St George was likely buried around two centuries before the construction of the Shalal Church that he supposedly
08:06built.
08:07So why are these remains here? This is weird.
08:10I don't know why they didn't just leave the bones buried in Palestine.
08:14You find a grave, to dig it up and ship them halfway around the world is pretty undignified.
08:22Why do you think they did it?
08:23I have no idea.
08:25But thanks to these bones here in St Anne's, we do know who decided to dig up the Shalal Mosaic.
08:32And we do know when.
08:38The Great War. World War One.
08:41And a reverend named William Maitland Woods.
08:46He was an amateur archaeologist.
08:48He was the army chaplain who was with the Australian forces when they discovered a mosaic, which they then decided
08:55they would remove and bring back to Australia.
08:58Which is all a little bizarre, but...
09:01Bizarre is something of an understatement here.
09:03So, people have raised questions over the...
09:06People have raised questions about this for a long time and there's obviously quite a body of thought who thinks
09:11we should never have had these items in Australia.
09:17So, we have a fake saint buried in Sydney and the mosaic floor of his ancient church three hours away
09:24in Canberra.
09:24It's like puzzle pieces spread across the country.
09:28Though, honestly, for me, the main question is this.
09:31Who in the middle of a war zone decides to dig up a sixth century mosaic?
09:36Like, how do you even consider doing that?
09:40And really, to answer that question, it all comes down to one guy, this William Maitland Woods.
09:52Hello. How are you?
09:54Very good. Come with me.
09:57Well, this is a bit fancy. Cheers.
10:01This is historian Dr Emily Robertson, who still vividly recalls the first time she saw the Shalal Mosaic.
10:07And I was really struck with how out of place it was amongst all of the other collection items.
10:12And so Dr Emily started digging into this Reverend William Maitland Woods.
10:17Maitland Woods is a really interesting character.
10:21He was born in the UK.
10:23He was educated in Oxford.
10:26And then he came to Australia and he served as a chaplain with the Queensland Mounted Forces.
10:33So, was he an archaeologist?
10:35No, he was an amateur archaeologist.
10:38And that wasn't as uncommon as you would think.
10:42Just a fun pastime.
10:44The British made a bit of a habit of going over and finding things that they liked.
10:49Really?
10:49Indeed.
10:50So, you say there's some stuff that the British stole, you say?
10:52Yes, yes. Interesting. Good to know.
10:54So, how does he end up in the Middle East? How does that happen?
10:57Okay, so he's serving as a chaplain with the Anzac Mounted Division.
11:03And he's travelling through the Holy Land.
11:10In World War I, Australian and New Zealand soldiers were in the Middle East, fighting off the Turkish Ottoman Empire,
11:16who were on the German side.
11:17How is it that Australia ends up in World War I?
11:21That's a great question.
11:23Essentially, Australia, as a dominion of the British Empire, was obliged to go to war.
11:28So, the only reason these men, William Maitland boards, any of them, are in this location is because of the
11:35British Empire?
11:35Absolutely.
11:37The way I see it is as a series of Russian dolls.
11:40So, the Australian national identity is the smaller doll that's developed to sit neatly within the larger doll of the
11:49British Empire.
11:49But for this army chaplain, William Maitland Woods, it's something of a religious crusade.
11:54Woods was a man who combined his interest in religion with the armed forces.
12:01So, his main job while he was with the men was to be there as their spiritual advisor.
12:08And part of his job as spiritual advisor was to explain archaeology to them, because they were in the Holy
12:14Land.
12:15Which explains how in 1917, Australian and New Zealand soldiers found themselves on a hill near a Palestinian town called
12:22Shalal.
12:23They were digging trenches, so this mosaic pops up.
12:26They literally just saw the pattern of the mosaic and realised, because Woods had been lecturing them constantly about antiquities,
12:35they recognised it.
12:36So, these men took so much pride, this was part of their Anzac story, to have found the mosaic.
12:46It had been damaged in the war, so Maitland Woods convinced his higher-ups the mosaic needed to be saved.
12:53He was given immediate approval, essentially, to get a whole group of people to dig up a mosaic.
13:00Is it weird to have an archaeological dig in the middle of a war?
13:04Yeah, I think so.
13:07And this is where it happens.
13:10Back in 1917, under the watchful eye of William Maitland Woods, some 32 Australian and New Zealand soldiers,
13:16they worked in searing heat, a dust storm coming in, there was occasional enemy fighters flying overhead,
13:23and they lifted up this incredible mosaic.
13:27They used glue, canvas and plaster to keep the patterns in place as they packed it into crates.
13:3263 crates to be sent to Cairo, and it was there that the British War Trophies Committee would decide their
13:39fate.
13:39And that is when the real drama begins.
13:42So, what happens to it is a very big fight between the British and the Australians about where it should
13:50end up.
13:51The British wanted all war trophies to go to the Imperial War Museum in the UK,
13:59and the Australians were really worried that the British would take their collection from them.
14:04Huh.
14:05You see, around the time of the lifting of the mosaic,
14:08Australian soldiers were already talking about one day building their own future war museum.
14:15I have now the honour to declare the Australian National War Memorial.
14:23And they had been told to collect things that were relevant to the war to perhaps go into this future
14:30war museum.
14:31Wait, wait, wait, wait, they were being told to, when they're at war, collect things?
14:36Absolutely.
14:37So we can put them in a war museum?
14:39Absolutely.
14:39So the Australians were known as perhaps the most avid and sometimes ghoulish collectors out of...
14:47This is a weird thing for us to be famous for, but yes, carry on.
14:49Yeah, well, it became an obsession.
14:53Cue some very furious letters between Australia and Great Britain.
14:57This is from the British side.
14:59So they wrote,
15:00I am to remind you that it is open to considerable doubt whether this mosaic can be regarded as a
15:06trophy,
15:07or as it was not captured from the enemy.
15:09No, it wasn't.
15:10And it is possible that it may ultimately be decided that the mosaic is to be restored to Palestine.
15:17So what are they saying here?
15:18They're basically saying it's not a trophy, you can't have it.
15:22They're essentially saying that.
15:23So this is from the Australian Department of Defence.
15:27Another viewpoint is that Britain already has a history and traditions and relics and trophies extending back for centuries.
15:32Basically, you guys got enough.
15:34Whereas Australia, it continues, has none here other than what she draws from the mother country.
15:40A nation is built upon pride of race, and now that Australia is making history of her own,
15:45and she requires every possible relic associated with this to help her children in that national spirit.
15:52It's interesting, like, the letters, reading the letters, you get a sense of a nation that's trying to assert itself.
16:00Like, it is a little bit like listening to a teenager talk to the parent, you know what I mean?
16:04Like, we did this, we deserve respect, this is part of our story.
16:08And Australians felt that they had sacrificed their lives too.
16:12So underlying this is also, we died.
16:1560,000 of us have died.
16:17You need to respect us for the sacrifice that we made.
16:30While the Shalal Mosaic was being held in this strange colonial custody battle,
16:35the Reverend William Maitland Woods seems to have taken things into his own hands.
16:40So, when we started looking into Maitland Woods, we found something,
16:46and I would like you to have a look at this.
16:49I've brought Emily to a totally different church.
16:51Yes, there's going to be a few of them.
16:53This is St James in the heart of Sydney, Australia.
16:56Maitland Woods, Palestine.
16:59Is this a missing piece of the Shalal Mosaic?
17:04No, it isn't.
17:05I'm sorry to tell you, it's not, it's a completely different mosaic.
17:09So it's definitely Maitland Woods?
17:11Yes.
17:11So he dug it up a year, nearly three months after he dug up the Shalal Mosaic.
17:16How many of these pieces did this guy send to Australia?
17:19That's a great question.
17:20I'd love to know the answer to that too.
17:23This piece.
17:24The Bones in St Anne's.
17:27Maitland Woods was so determined to smuggle holy relics before the British could get them
17:31that he shipped what he could through a network of friends, soldiers and clergy.
17:35That's why there are pieces of this story everywhere.
17:39There may be other pieces of mosaic that we don't know about
17:42that are still floating around in Australia.
17:46But given the British were fighting to keep control of the mosaic,
17:50just how did it end up in the Australian War Memorial?
17:53Hey Ryan, how are you? Good, nice to meet you.
17:55Nice to meet you too.
17:56Shall we go? Yes.
17:57Ryan Johnson is the former head of art for the Australian War Memorial.
18:01From what I can gather, there was a bit of a political stoush over who gets to keep these mosaics.
18:07Is that right?
18:08Yeah, so it went back and forward with Britain for quite a long time
18:10because the British wanted it to come back to London.
18:13The British said it needed to be inspected to be determined what the future of this should be
18:16and as to whether it should go back to Palestine.
18:18The Australians were suspicious of this and thought it would just end up in the British Museum.
18:22So the Reverend immediately had part of it smuggled out of Palestine with a colleague of his
18:27who was returning to Australia.
18:29So there are real pieces of the shalal mosaic that were smuggled all around Australia.
18:35But in the end, Britain actually relented and they gave up the shalal mosaic.
18:40It was then transferred to Canberra when the War Memorial was being built to be included
18:45in one of the foundational walls in the lower level of the memorial.
18:49So the shalal mosaic is in the wall?
18:52It's concreted into the wall.
18:53It is the wall.
18:54Was it legal for them to take the mosaic?
18:58That's a really great question.
19:00What I would say is that I think it's a good rule of thumb not to take things that don't
19:05belong to you.
19:06And if you are a museum that discovers you have things in your collection that shouldn't really be there,
19:13you should at least offer to give them back.
19:16Ryan isn't alone in that view.
19:20I'm in Jerusalem meeting with Dr John Seligman from the Israeli Antiquities Authority.
19:26Well, this is amazing.
19:27Yes.
19:34Yeah, this is Dominus Flevitt.
19:35This is the place where Christ stood and saw the city of Jerusalem and the temple in front of him
19:40and understands that the city is going to be destroyed.
19:42So he stands here and he weeps.
19:49He's brought me here to see what a mosaic like shalal would have looked like had,
19:54well, William Maitland Wood not gotten to it,
19:57had it been left in the ground.
19:59Can I show you this?
20:00Yeah, sure.
20:00Okay, so this is what is hanging in Australia at the moment.
20:04Okay.
20:06So what are the things that stand out to you as you first look at it?
20:09You would have the urn and the trellises of the grapes,
20:12of the grape vine that come out of the urn
20:14and they move around creating medallions with bunches of grapes and vine leaves,
20:17which you can see very clearly in interspaces.
20:20And then they used the medallions themselves, which they filled with iconography.
20:24All of this, part of their justification for taking it is that they said that they were saving it.
20:29Okay.
20:30That if it had stayed here it would have been damaged and indeed it had already sustained some damage.
20:34Okay.
20:34My question is, is that a reasonable argument for pulling something up out of the ground?
20:38No, it's not.
20:39The way you save something like this is to cover it with earth.
20:41Obviously they wanted it.
20:43That's the bottom line.
20:44But there was no reason to remove it.
20:46If this had happened today, would it be considered a crime?
20:49It would be considered today a war crime.
20:51This is stolen property.
20:57Stolen.
20:58Saved.
20:59Fought over.
21:00When you put the various fragments of this mosaic story together, what is it saying?
21:07It's like the mosaic holds two stories on this land, Australia.
21:11It's about a British dominion trying to find its identity within the empire.
21:15But over where the mosaic is from, it's the story of empires dividing a land.
21:23How important is the British Empire in what's become of Israel and Palestine?
21:28Absolutely crucial.
21:29Absolutely central.
21:30It goes right back.
21:31So, the First World War is a time when the Ottoman Empire collapses and the British move into the Middle
21:38East.
21:40The British, along with other allies, had made promises of an Arabic homeland in exchange for helping defeat the Ottomans.
21:47They don't come good on that promise.
21:50Instead, begin the process of giving territory to Jewish people, many of whom were experiencing increasing persecution around the world.
21:56And of course, they have their own deep history on this land.
22:01And they start to make moves to set parts of the Middle East aside for the purposes of establishing Israel.
22:12And I guess the repercussions of that have extended for decades, haven't they?
22:15Yeah, absolutely.
22:17I have.
22:18And probably will for decades more.
22:24And caught in this history is the Shalal Mosaic.
22:30It was looted from land that was very clearly known then as Palestine.
22:34But that same spot is now very much governed by the modern day state of Israel.
22:39What do you think should happen with this mosaic?
22:43Well, I think ultimately it should be returned to where it came from.
22:46This is property which should be returned to the legal owners and that's the state of Israel.
22:50The fact that when this was taken there was no state of Israel, does that change that for you at
22:54all?
22:54For me, it doesn't change it.
22:56For international law, that could be an issue.
22:59Right now, the Shalal Mosaic is literally in the wall.
23:02It is part of the wall.
23:03Correct.
23:04Could you even take it out if you wanted to?
23:07I don't know.
23:09I do know it would be very difficult.
23:11Whether it's impossible or just very expensive, I couldn't say.
23:17In case you're wondering, for the last four months we've been asking the Australian War Memorial for an interview.
23:22They did give us a statement that didn't answer any of our questions.
23:26And they wouldn't let us film the mosaic because it's undergoing conservation.
23:30So this one, it's a fake.
23:33Good one though.
23:35Meaning, in all of these mosaics...
23:38Is that actually the Shalal Mosaic?
23:40Is that part of it?
23:41No, it is not.
23:42No.
23:43Is this a missing piece of the Shalal Mosaic?
23:46No.
23:46Oh.
23:47It isn't.
23:48I'm sorry to tell you.
23:49Technically, I still haven't shown you a real piece of the Shalal Mosaic.
23:55That is, until now.
23:57Remember when Ryan said Maitland Woods smuggled other pieces of the Shalal Mosaic?
24:02The Reverend immediately had part of it smuggled out of Palestine.
24:05In St John's Cathedral, one of the grandest old churches in Brisbane, Australia,
24:10lies one of the final pieces of Maitland Woods' legacy.
24:14So that is another piece of the Shalal Mosaic, right?
24:17Yes, it is a piece of the Shalal Mosaic, yes.
24:20Look, for me, as a First World War historian, it shows us how people needed to bring the war back
24:27home.
24:28Because it was so distant and people didn't understand either the violence or the wonder of what they were seeing.
24:34Yes, this end of the cathedral, the east end of the cathedral, has a lot of relics that attach to
24:40World War I.
24:42And when I think about what it was like for those people coming back, the whole country was dealing with
24:48trauma.
24:48I think in that great ferment, people were really trying to make sense of what had happened.
24:57And trying to get to the point where the sacrifice wasn't in vain, and I think some people thought it
25:02was.
25:04What does it mean to you to have something that stretches right back to the Holy Land here in this
25:10church?
25:11Well, for me, it's a bit of a conflicted article because I'm a great believer in how stuff like this
25:18really belongs where it came from,
25:20rather than being appropriated by us.
25:24So I understand why people would want to have an object.
25:29But I also have that conflict of thinking, well, this mosaic probably these days you would not put this in
25:37this building.
25:39I mean, that really is the story of the Shalal Mosaic, isn't it?
25:42It is messy and it is complicated.
25:45And there's so many dots on the map, right?
25:47It's about us as a nation, Australia.
25:50It's about our role with the British Empire.
25:52It's about the Middle East and Israel and Palestine.
25:55It's amazing how much it kind of connects to, right, Emily?
25:58Yeah.
25:59An object has lots of meanings, and sometimes that meaning can be given to it well after it was made.
26:07Yes, and it absolutely represents this very strange story about a devout Christian man
26:14who could see a Byzantine mosaic representing the story of Australians who were in his mind on crusade.
26:23Do you think we'll ever know how many pieces of the mosaic are spread around?
26:27No, I don't think we'll ever know and we're never going to find out where all of the bits are.
26:32It's very sad.
26:38One mosaic, wanted by Israel, Palestine, Britain, now somehow spread across Australia.
26:45And each imbuing it with their own meaning.
26:48But what does that mean for the people it was taken from?
26:53Each mosaic is telling a story and we would like to show the people where is our cultural heritage now.
27:01If they know their history, maybe it will help them to support their identity.
27:08I am Muslim, but before to be Muslim, I was Christian.
27:15Then before Christian, I was Jewish.
27:18I am not coming from nothing.
27:20I have a base.
27:21I have foundation.
27:23We have a lot of things in common.
27:25This is the message that mosaic can tell you, cultural heritage can tell you.
27:33It's wonderful.
27:36This is the message that mosaic can tell you.
27:39It's good to be Muslim.
27:39I am Jewish.
27:42You might be Muslim, but you may be Muslim.
27:43You may also present together the forex.
27:43But of course, it's older and it's older.
27:45You may not be Muslim.
27:45You may be Muslim.
27:47You may be Muslim.
27:47You
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