Jordan has complained to the United Nations in a bid to acquire the Dead Sea Scrolls from Israel, saying the Jewish state seized the ancient texts during the 1967 Six-Day war, an official said on Monday.

The scrolls, some of which are as old as the third century BC, were part of a display at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum in Canada that ended on Sunday.

Jordan has asked Canada to seize the scrolls, invoking the 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, to which the two countries are signatories.