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The Manhattan District Legal professional’s Workplace has introduced the return of two statues, collectively valued at $1.26 million, to their rightful dwelling in Libya. The artefacts, Marble Face of a Ptolemaic Queen and Feminine Bust, had been stolen from the traditional metropolis of Cyrene, positioned close to modern-day Shahhat, and smuggled out by infamous British artwork trafficker Robin Symes, whose storied position as a liaison for antiquities smuggling networks internationally spans a number of many years and jurisdictions. Symes had acquired the 2 sculptures for his private assortment, hiding them in a New York storage unit for greater than 20 years.
Throughout current excavations in Libya, archaeologists found what they consider to be the torso initially belonging to Feminine Bust in a tomb in Cyrene. The bust was an essential funerary reduction designed to embellish the necropolis of Cyrene.
“It’s shameful that these lovely items had been saved away for many years by a convicted trafficker,” stated District Legal professional Alvin Bragg in a press release. “Cyrene has confronted important looting, however due to the work of our Antiquities Trafficking Unit and companions at Homeland Safety, we now have now returned a number of items from this historical metropolis again to the folks of Libya. We proceed to have ongoing investigations into stolen Libyan artifacts and look ahead to extra repatriation ceremonies sooner or later.”
The Manhattan DA’s workplace has repatriated 5 antiquities to Libya, valued at almost $3 million, since 2022. Throughout Bragg’s tenure, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit has returned greater than 2,475 items to 24 international locations, valued collectively at greater than $235 million.
The 84-year-old Symes is liable for numerous gross sales of looted artefacts to personal collectors and establishments worldwide. Whereas his skilled downfall started within the 2000s with asset conflicts with the household of his late companion, Christo Michaelides, it was the 2016 raid of his storage unit at Geneva Freeport in Switzerland that launched the general public at giant to his huge trove of 17,000 looted Roman and Etruscan antiquities. Earlier this summer season, 750 artefacts, greater than half of which hailed from the Neolithic or Byzantine eras, had been repatriated to Italy following a prolonged authorized battle with Symes.
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