more-in The Egmore Museum has refuted reports that a sarcophagus found in 1888 by Alaxender Rea in Pallavaram was found smashed at the strong room in the museum. The initial report claimed that a sarcophagus was broken about 10 years back while in storage and there had been no effort to repair it. Museum records accessed by The Hindu on Tuesday show that there were two notings of sarcophagi in the strong room — one found by Mr. Rea at Pallavaram and another that has no mention of who excavated it. The records dated and signed by the then museum curator show, on February 28, 1970, 8 items were recorded as part of ‘Pallavaram Collections’ that were deposited in the museum’s prehistoric collection. The noting related to the sarcophagus has been recorded as “Bits of Sarcophagus – 14”. “These are the only records of the sarcophagi that we have. Alexander Rea did not document it. The sarcophagus arrived at the museum in broken pieces. Only the legs were intact,” an official said. In a report submitted to the Tamil Nadu government that The Hindu has seen, museum officials said that Mr. Rea personally had not recorded either about this sarcophagus or any of his/other’s collections, in any of the accession registers; and “the very first documentation of any prehistoric artefact from the museum’s collections itself begins only by 1929”. “After careful scrutiny of as many relevant records as possible, it has been found out that there has been no mention regarding the deposition of any Pallavaram sarcophagus in the museum collections, except for the one mentioned above. However, in the same register, a noting dated July 27, 1970, recorded and duly signed by the then curator that ‘broken legs of sarcophagus have been deposited in the prehistoric collections of the museum’,” the report said.

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