[Handout/Culture Ministry]
A rich group of 15 plundered marble, bronze and pottery antiquities covering some 3,000 years of Greek history that were confiscated in the US has been handed over to Greek officials in New York, the Culture Ministry said Monday.
A ministry statement said the works include bronze helmets with ornate relief decoration illegally excavated from a site on the southern island of Crete, that will be reunited with other plundered works recovered from the same location.
The late 7th century BC pieces were dug up by antiquities thieves in 1964 at Afrati in the Viannos region, and other artefacts from the same site are in the archaeological museum of Iraklio.
The ministry statement did not specify how the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office had laid hands on the 15 artefacts handed over to Culture Minister Lina Mendoni.
It said they included a female marble Cycladic figurine of the Spedos type dating to 2700-2600 BC, a heavy bronze bracelet from northern Greece from the 7th-6th centuries BC, a marble copy of a conch seashell from around 400 BC and a golden 2nd century BC necklace with an amphora-shaped pendant.
Including the new group, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has returned a total 179 Greek antiquities to Athens since 2022, Mendoni said.
“It is particularly important that some of the artefacts we are taking delivery of today will be reunited with finds from the same excavation in the artchaeological museum of Iraklio,” she added. “Some of these were illegally trafficked abroad and are now returning home.”
Mendoni has spearheaded efforts to wrest back plundered Greek antiquities from museums, collections and dealers worldwide, scoring several successes.
“Each repatriation is an act of justice towards our history,” she said.
Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos, a former colonel of Marines of Greek ancestry who heads the Antiquities Trafficking Unit, attended the handover ceremony in Manhattan.
