Fifteen Greek antiquities spanning nearly five millennia have returned from the United States, including a group of bronze armor taken from an illegally excavated site in Crete more than 60 years ago.
The 15 objects were formally handed back to Greece at a ceremony in Manhattan on September 21. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said the antiquities are valued at nearly $3 million and were seized from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Its announcement describes how objects were smuggled into the United States and passed through dealers and collectors using false provenance, exhibitions and museum donations.
For Crete, one part of the return carries a particular resonance. Five bronze military objects—two helmets and three waist guards, or mitrai—date to the late seventh century B.C. and are linked to the sanctuary on Prophet Elias hill at Afrati, in Heraklion. The site and nearby tombs were looted extensively between 1964 and 1966. Greek officials documented the objects’ origins through archaeological and historical publications, archival records and evidence from other seizures in the area.
Some of the returned pieces can now be reunited with finds from the same excavation that are held at the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion. That reunion helps restore not only objects to Greece, but part of an archaeological group whose history was broken apart by looting.
The rest of the collection traces a long arc of Greek history. The oldest pieces include a marble Cycladic female figurine dating to 2700–2600 B.C. and a marble lid from a small box, dated 2700–2200 B.C. A clay beak-spouted jug from 1750–1700 B.C. came from a burial assemblage in the Argolis-Corinthia region, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Other objects include an engraved bronze bracelet from the seventh or sixth century B.C., a marble conch dated to about 400 B.C., a bronze mirror disk and strigil from the fourth century B.C., and a gold necklace with an amphora-shaped pendant from the second century B.C. The youngest object is a first-century A.D. marble portrait head made from Parian marble. Greece’s Ministry of Culture says it may depict the Genius Augusti, the personification of an emperor’s spirit.
The return was the latest result of cooperation between Greek cultural authorities and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit. In its account of the handover, Greece’s Ministry of Culture emphasized that its specialists researched and documented the objects’ provenance and the circumstances of the looting, working with U.S. investigators to establish their connection to Greece.
Each recovered piece adds something back to the historical record. In this case, five objects taken from Crete’s ground decades ago can once again be understood alongside material from the same place—and the larger collection can be seen in Greece, where its story began.
