British authorities Return Looted Antiquities To Iraq

 

Unidentified art dealer looted a group of ancient artifacts from Iraq. The U.K. repatriated the 5,000-year-old ceramics during a ceremony in London Friday. The objects will be returned to their home country and held in the collection of the national museum in Baghdad.

The Iraqi ambassador to the U.K., Salih Husain Ali, was quoted in The Guardian praising the antiquities experts “for their exceptional efforts in the process of identifying and returning looted antiquities to Iraq.” The ambassador added: “Such collaboration between Iraq and the United Kingdom is vital for the preservation of Iraqi heritage.”

The small conical works were taken during the period of chaos following the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, a period of widespread looting of ancient sites throughout the country. And while experts have on some occasions returned stolen items to the country, it is very rare to pinpoint the exact temple where the items once resided—and in this case, the experts were helped out by something of a coincidence. A British Museum archeologist just happened to be leading a team through a temple in Tello, the modern Arabic name for the ancient Sumerian city of Girsu, and noticed that there were holes in the wall, and discarded material that suggested items were looted from the premises.

 

Ancient Vase @ Metropolitan Museum of Art Was Seized By Manhattan DA

 

A warrant was put out for a Greek vase aka “bell krater”on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art which dates back to 360 B.C.,” last week, at which point the museum delivered it to prosecutors. Questions around its provenance arose in 2014 after forensic archaeologist Christos Tsirogiannis published research connecting the vase to Giacomo Medici, an art dealer convicted in Italy for conspiracy to traffic illicit antiquities. Tsirogiannis said he informed the Met to his findings, but received no response. The museum said it reached out formally and informally to Italian authorities about the matter. Frustrated, Tsirogiannis sent his evidence, which includes Polaroid photos of Medici with the bell krater, to Manhattan prosecutors in May. They were sufficiently convinced the piece had been looted from Italy. It is now likely the object will return to Italy. “The museum has worked diligently to ensure a just resolution of this matter,” a spokesperson for the Met told the Times. In another case this week, Manhattan prosecutors seized a second ancient statue, a marble sculpture of a bull head, currently on loan to museum. A Met curator researching the work found it likely had been looted during the Lebanese civil war of the 1980s, and reported the matter to higher-ups at the museum, who alerted Lebanese authorities. They, in turn, contacted American law enforcement to retrieve it. The owners of the work say they hold clear title and have sued New York prosecutors (and antiquities directorate in Lebanon) for its return.