Italian occupation of Libya and the Protection of Archaeological Law

Abstract

Italy entered Tripoli of the West and it was far behind the civilization which   one of its arguments to invade the country. However, the Libyans did not accept that; therefore, they resisted the occupation for many years. In conjunction with the war operations, the Italians began to work to discover the archaeological sites. Their second argument to justify the occupation was to rebuild the Romanian empire, who they claimed to have inherited. Therefore, they started to colonize the countries that had previously been controlled by Rome and had their effects and their destroyed buildings.  They began to explore early and discovered many hidden treasures, valuable archaeological sites, and then they started to organize the process to protect these sites from theft and corruption.  The colonial authorities, by a royal decree in 1914, issued to organize the dealing with archaeological sites, but it was not a solid law in the common sense in accordance with modern legislation. It was issued urgently to allow the colonial authorities to govern all the archaeological sites.