German museum's Chinese warriors under investigation

Visitors look at a life-size terracotta warrior at the exhibition ''Power in Death - The Terracotta Army of the First Emperor of China'', at the Museum of Ethnology in Hamburg December 11, 2007. German police were investigating on Tuesday whether ancient Chinese terracotta warriors that form a museum's newly-opened exhibition are fake.

BERLIN (Reuters) - German police were investigating on Tuesday whether ancient Chinese terracotta warriors that form a museum's newly-opened exhibition are fake.

The Hamburg Museum of Ethnology is offering refunds to about 10,000 visitors who have already viewed the "Power in Death" exhibition since it opened on November 25, pending an outcome to the probe.

The display of eight clay warrior figures, two horses and 60 smaller objects will remain open -- with a sign stating its authenticity is disputed -- until a panel of Chinese experts arrive to review the figures later this week, museum spokeswoman Marina Lifschitz said.

Detectives are looking into whether fraud or copyright infringement has occurred.

German media reported on Sunday that officials from Xi'an, home of the 2,000-year-old clay funerary army, said the museum's figures had to be copies. Chinese officials were quoted saying they were not aware of original figures on loan in Germany.

Lifschitz said Hamburg museum authorities believed the figures were real because they had asked their partner in the exhibition to provide artifacts reconstructed from pieces found at the Xi'an site.

A spokesman for the museum's partner, the Centre of Chinese Art and Culture in Markkleeberg, near Leipzig, said the figures had been obtained from public authorities, institutes and businesses in China. Their Chinese partners did not say the figures were real, he said.

"There was never a word about originals in the Hamburg contract," CCAC spokesman Yolna Grimm said.

Unearthed about 30 years ago by a farmer digging a well, the Terracotta Army comes from the tomb of Emperor Qin Shihuangdi who spent over 20 years laying the foundations of modern China before dying in 210 BC.

The biggest overseas loan by the Chinese museum housing figures is currently at the British Museum in London, whose "First Emperor" exhibition contains 120 artifacts, including 20 life-size warriors.

(Editing by Matthew Jones)