Fifteen ancient Greek treasures worth nearly $3 million, some of them dug up illegally on Crete in 1964 and smuggled to the U.S., have been handed back to Greece in New York.
The collection covers an extraordinary sweep of history. The oldest pieces, a marble figurine and cap, date to around 2700 B.C.E., and the youngest is a Roman marble bust depicting the Genius Augusti, the divine spirit of a Roman emperor, from between 14 and 68 C.E.
In between come a pottery vessel from around 1750 B.C.E., bronze helmets and waist guards with decorative etchings from the late seventh century B.C.E., bronze bracelets and a Hellenistic gold necklace from the second century B.C.E.
Many of the objects came from an illegal dig in Heraklion, Crete, in 1964. They were smuggled into the U.S. and laundered by dealers and collectors through false provenance.
The objects were seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit. Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos, who leads it, said the money was never the point.
“Their true value is far more timeless. Freedom, justice, honor, kindness, democracy, beauty,” he said, according to the National Herald, as reported by Smithsonian Magazine.
Since 2011, the unit has recovered more than 6,400 antiquities for 40 countries, including 175 Greek pieces worth around $51.5 million.
For Greece’s Culture Minister Lina Mendoni, who accepted the objects at a ceremony in Manhattan on Sept. 21, the handover means some of them can rejoin the rest of the dig they were taken from.
“It is particularly important that some of the artifacts we are taking delivery of today will be reunited with finds from the same excavation in the archaeological museum of Iraklio. Some of these were illegally trafficked abroad and are now returning home,” she said.
