Stolen artefacts returned to Lebanon as US turns up pressure on illicit trade
The US on Friday returned to Lebanese officials three relics stolen during Lebanon’s civil war, including a statue once exhibited at New York’s premier museum, officials said.
The ancient artefacts included a bull’s head, which was recovered this summer from the Metropolitan Museum of Art where it had been on loan.
Believed to be of Greek origin, the marble head dates to about 360BC and has been valued at $1.2 million (Dh4.4m).
The museum said it handed the head over to the Manhattan district attorney’s office after a curator discovered that it may have been stolen during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.
The other relics, two marble torsos dating to the fourth and sixth century BC, were excavated in the 1970s from near Sidon, in south-western Lebanon.
The items were recovered by the Manhattan district attorney office’s antiquities trafficking unit, whose goal is to repatriate stolen pieces from around the world.
They are the latest looted artefacts to be returned from New York, considered the US centre of antiquity sales that are fuelled by the city’s concentration of wealth.
Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr said his office had recovered several thousand trafficked antiquities since 2012, collectively valued at more than $150m.
Members of the new trafficking unit are working with overseas governments as well as investigators from the US department of homeland security.
Its chief, Matthew Bogdanos, said ancient works found in war-torn lands easily ended up in the hands of dealers who were “less than scrupulous” in determining their origins.
Majdi Ramadan, the Lebanese consul general in New York, said the Manhattan prosecutor’s efforts “will mark the end of a long trail of theft and illicit trading”.