A 3,000-year-old Assyrian bas relief discovered next to a dartboard in the candy shop of the Canford School, a boys school in Dorset, England, brought a whopping $11.8 million at Christie's in London - a record price for an antiquity sold at auction and far above the $1.5 million estimate.
The relief, from the palace of an Assyrian king, had hung at the school since its founding in 1923. It had been covered over with layers of white paint and was discovered by John Russell, an American professor who was a writing a book about the history of the candy shop, which had housed antiquities before it became part of the school. Russell alerted the British Museum.John Lever, the school's headmaster, said proceeds from the sale would go toward building a new sports hall and a theater.
Christine Insley Green, who heads Christie's antiquity department in London, said the buyer, who bid by telephone, could not be identified.