TWO fascinating archaeological exhibitions have just opened in Moscow but political controversy is swirling about both of them, distracting the attention of journalists, if not the public, from the beauty of the objects themselves.
At the Pushkin Museum, the gold of King Priam, excavated from the site of Troy by a man archaeologist and confiscated by the Soviet Union from the defeated Nazis, is gleaming in the light of day for the first time in half a century. But four countries are claiming it in an ugly dispute which takes some of the shine off the show.
Just down the road at the Oriental Art Museum, crowds are flocking to see the body of a 2,400 year old Siberian princess, which was preserved in the permafrost and touched up for public display by the bio chemists whose usual job is to keep the corpse of Lenin perfectly pickled in its Red Square mausoleum.
But again a dispute has soured the atmosphere The government of the independently minded Altai region, where the princess was found, is angry that its treasures are being removed to the centre and, it has declared a moratorium on further digging except by local archaeologists.
The "Lady", as the mummy is called, was discovered in 1993 by a team from the Russian Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography. She belonged to a nomadic tribe called the Pazyryks, who roamed the mountains bordering China around 400 BC. A later tomb, covered her burial mound, sparing it from grave robbers.
Unfortunately the archaeologists had a few accidents with the mummy. First they made the mistake of pouring boiling water on the ice, which held her in its grip. Her still white skin, tattooed with fantastic animal designs, quickly blackened in the atmosphere. Then the helicopter in which the scientists were taking her to Novosibirsk crash landed, giving her a bump not recommended for a lady of her age.
The biochemist at the Moscow Centre for Biological Structures restored her skin other scientists, working in the laboratory made famous by Martin Cruz Smith's thriller Gorky Park, reconstructed her face in clay from the evidence of her skull.
Thus the "Lady" was made ready to meet the 20th century public. She is displayed with her riches, including clothes of Chinese silk. But there is no gold. For that you must cross the road to the Pushkin Museum.
The Trojan gold, excavated by Heinrich Schliemann in the 19th century, is part of a much larger hoard of European art works from Baroque sculptures to Impressionist paintings which special confiscation squads appointed by Stalin boxed up and took out of Berlin at the end of the second World War. The justification for this state sanctioned looting was that the Soviet people deserved compensation for all the damage the Nazis had done while occupying their territory.
But instead of being put on display for the long suffering Soviet public to enjoy, the art, was hidden away for decades in secret vaults. Until very recently, the director of the Pushkin Museum, Irina Antonova, was still lying about the treasures in her cellars. So it was ironic to hear her say at the opening of the show: "This exhibit has been long awaited, perhaps too long. Perhaps it should have been opened long ago.
The people who blew the whistle on Ms Antonova and other members of the Soviet - cultural establishment were Konstantin Akinsha, an art historian, and Grigory Kozlov, a junior museum worker. When they were students, they had heard their professors talking in hushed tones about the missing art. Then they "stumbled" upon the proof that it was, indeed, in Moscow.
Back in Communist times, on April 22nd, Lenin's birthday, citizens were expected to do an extra day of "voluntary" work. The young men were helping to tidy up at the Minister of Culture when they saw a bureaucrat throwing away a pile of papers. They retrieved them and discovered they were the transport papers which had accompanied the gold and other art from Berlin. All 259 items in the exhibition - including a diadem, necklaces, goblets, ritual axes and figurines - were listed. The papers were dynamite.
The young men hid them until glasnost dawned, then told the world what they knew. After the failure of the 1991 hardline coup, the authorities gradually began to come clean. First paintings were put on show. Two major exhibitions were held in Moscow and St Petersburg last year. The gold, being the most exciting of the treasures, was saved for last.
And now the fight begins as to who should ultimately keep it. Many in Moscow still believe Russia should be compensated for its wartime losses. Germany wants the gold back. Turkey also has a claim because Schliemann excavated on what is now its territory without a licence. As a compromise, Athens is offering the Trojan, gold a home because of the historical associations with ancient Greece.