Fifteen ancient Greek artifacts that investigators say were smuggled into the United States through false paperwork and quiet museum donations were formally handed back to Greece last month in a ceremony in Manhattan, the latest haul from a long-running antiquities trafficking investigation.
The objects, identified in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, span roughly 5,000 years of Greek history. They include two bronze helmets and three bronze belly guards from the late seventh century B.C., decorated with embossed flowers, dogs and mythological figures and collectively valued at more than $2 million; a terracotta jug dating to 1750-1700 B.C.; a marble figurine and box lid from around 3,700 B.C.; bronze and gold bracelets; and a marble bust of Genius Augusti from the Roman period.
According to the Manhattan District Attorney's office, the bronze pieces were looted from a sanctuary on Prophet Elias hill in Crete, which was extensively plundered between 1964 and 1966, while the terracotta jug was taken from burial sites in the Argolis-Corinthia region and routed through Switzerland and the United Kingdom before reaching the Met. The Sept. 21 handover ceremony was attended by Greece's Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, and the Met says it cooperated fully with investigators once the pieces' origins were confirmed.
Some of these were illegally trafficked abroad and are now returning home.
Lina Mendoni, Greek Minister of Culture
The repatriation is the latest result of the DA's Antiquities Trafficking Unit, which Smithsonian magazine reports has now recovered more than 6,400 looted cultural objects valued above $490 million since it was formed, returning over 6,150 of them to 39 countries and securing 18 criminal convictions tied to antiquities trafficking.
For Greece, the return adds to a steady trickle of repatriations of objects taken from the country over decades, often during periods of lax export enforcement or outright looting, and later laundered through private collectors, auction houses and museum donation programs before landing on display in the United States and Europe.
The 15 pieces are expected to go on public display in Greece once conservation and cataloguing work is complete, giving museum visitors a chance to see objects that, for some, spent longer in storage or in private hands abroad than they ever did on public view in their country of origin.