Lima: A first batch of nearly 400 Machu Picchu objects arrived in Lima on Wednesday from Yale University almost 100 years after they were taken away from the Inca citadel by explorer and academic Hiram Bingham, officials said.
Yale returned 363 objects and 1,000 fragments in the first batch and by the end of 2012 will have sent back 46,332 artefacts from Machu Picchu that Bingham took out of Peru, Culture Minister Juan Ossio said.
Yale and Cuzco's San Antonio Abad University have signed an agreement to carry out joint research and study, Ossio said.
"Students from Cuzco will go to Yale University for further study. There will also be an exchange of professors. A happy ending," Ossio told Radio Programas del Peru.
The antiquities that arrived Wednesday were to remain in the customs area of Lima's international airport for a few hours before being transferred to the presidential palace where President Alan Garcia was to receive them.
The transfer will take place under tight security, with 600 police officers to take part in the operation, police chief General Raul Salazar said.
Detailed inventory
The objects will not be exhibited until next week because technical requirements stipulate that the boxes can only be opened after two days and then a detailed inventory will be conducted.
Bingham (1875-1956), a lecturer at Yale who later became a US senator, took the artefacts to the university after his expeditions to Machu Picchu in 1912 and 1915.
They were supposedly taken out on loan for a few months but it was almost 100 years before they were returned. The Peruvian government signed a memorandum of understanding with Yale University last November 23, giving that institution a maximum of two years to return the artifacts discovered and removed by Bingham.
The agreement followed a long-running dispute that had even led to Peru filing a civil suit against Yale in a federal court.
The accord was signed after Garcia's government launched an international media campaign to demand the return to the country of all the artefacts removed a century back.
