ANCIENT GOLD RING RETURNED TO GREECE
3,000-year-old ring discovered in 1927 traversed the world
ATHENS, Greece
A more than 3,000-yearold gold signet ring that was stolen from an Aegean island in World War II, crossed the Atlantic, was bought by a Nobel Prize-winning Hungarian scientist and ended up in a Swedish museum has found its way back to Greece.
It was the latest in a series of coups by Greek authorities seeking the return of works plundered from the antiquities-rich country — even though an initial effort by the Swedish museum to return the ring apparently fell between the cracks of 1970s bureaucracy.
The Greek culture ministry said Friday that the gold Mycenaean-era work from Rhodes, decorated with two facing sphinxes, was willingly returned by Swedish officials who provided full assistance with documenting the artifact and its provenance. The Mycenaean era was the last phase of the Bronze Age in ancient Greece, spanning the period from approximately 1600 to 1100 BCE.
Greek experts confirmed the identification, and the piece was handed over in Stockholm by Vidar Helgesen, executive director of the Nobel Foundation, to which the ring had been bequeathed by the Hungarian biophysicist Georg von Bekesy. The foundation had given it to the Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm.
Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni thanked the Nobel Foundation and Swedish authorities for the repatriation, saying it “shows their respect for modern Greece and our constant efforts to fight the illegal trafficking of cultural goods.”
The ring was discovered in 1927 by Italian archaeologists in a Mycenaean grave near the ancient city of Ialysos on Rhodes. The culture ministry said the ring was stolen from a museum on Rhodes during WWII and surfaced in the United States. It was bought there during the 1950s or 1960s by von Bekesy, whose collection was donated to the Nobel Foundation after his death in 1972.
The ring will now be displayed in a museum on Rhodes.