A buyer of antiquities is suing University College London for the return of a multi-million-pound collection of ancient artefacts he lent it a decade ago.

Martin Schøyen, a Norwegian tycoon who has homes in London and Oslo, accuses the university of giving him “spurious reasons” for failing to return 654 Aramaic incantation bowls that date from the 1st century. He loaned the bowls, which are inscribed with magical texts, for academic research purposes in 1996. But two years ago the strength of criticism from scholars about the bowls’ provenance led the university to open an investigation. Lord Renfrew of Kaims-thorn, director of the McDon-ald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, joined an independent ethics committee headed by the lawyer David Freeman.

The committee’s report was delivered last summer, and although UCL has yet to publish it, the case will make other public institutions wary of handling unprovenanced antiquities.

While Mr Schøyen’s claim that the bowls were exported legally from the Middle East is being challenged, the collection remains in store at UCL.

The angry owner is now taking legal action, insisting that access to the collection was provided to UCL “only for research purposes”. He said in a statement: “In recent months, the Schøyen Collection has become frustrated with the waste of time and money caused by a lengthy and inconclusive inquiry into provenance and with the spurious reasons being given for not returning the bowls.”

He added: “The Schøyen Collection . . . has now reluctantly come to the view that legal proceedings are the only way forward.”

The Schøyen Collection, based in London and Oslo, boasts more than 13,000 significant manuscripts and other artefacts of cultural importance spanning 5,000 years of history. Its jewels include fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Dunhuang Buddhist trove.

Atle Omland, a researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, noted that Mr Schøyen apparently has a document stating that the bowls were exported legally from Jordan in 1988, even though they are suspected to have been taken unlawfully from Iraq after 1990.

He said: “There seem to be serious doubts about his export licence, that [the document] is a fake . . . and that Iraq has the legal claim over them. Legally, Iraq are the owners if they were taken out after 1990, and they were taken out of Iraq.”

The bowls are believed to have been used by Mesopota-mian Jews to ward off evil spirits. Ancient Mesopotamia — the cradle of civilisation as the birthplace of writing, codified law and astronomy — is modern-day Iraq.

The university’s investigation was prompted by allegations against Mr Schøyen in a documentary by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and David Hebditch, a British documentary maker.

The collector was unsuccessful when he appealed to Nor-way’s equivalent of the Press Complaints Commission to stop its screening.

When the bowls were lent to the university, there was no specific regulation governing the acceptance of cultural objects by the university. Professor Michael Worton, the Vice-Provost of UCL, declined to comment yesterday.

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