Returning stolen marble statues to Libya

The American newspaper “The New York Times” revealed in its latest report that some of the stolen antiquities were returned to Libya by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

The newspaper added that the stolen antiquities are marble busts, including a statue depicting a veiled woman, which was stolen from the Temple of Cyrene, which was part of ancient Greek civilization.

The history of the statue to the Metropolitan Museum of Art dates back to the year 350 BC, and its value is estimated at about 470 thousand dollars. Investigators also confirmed that the statue that was seized from the museum was smuggled from Libya to Egypt by “Emil Saad,” who was sentenced in the year. 2000 in Egypt on charges of smuggling antiquities, and has since died.

One of the investigators adds that the statue appeared on the international art market in 1997 and shows signs of looting, such as dirt on the surface and new chips at the base and in the veil.

The Department of Homeland Security had confiscated some time ago a funerary statue of a veiled female from a gallery in Manhattan that had been listed for sale online for more than $500,000 to Libya. Another bust of a veiled woman was seized from a dealer in 2008. A second piece of the statue was also returned to Libya. Bearded Man”, valued at approximately $300,000, has been traded on the art market for decades and was confiscated this month, while the Manhattan District Attorney describes these artifacts as windows into thousands of years of culture and civilization and deserve to be returned to their country of origin.

Observers believe that the reason for the theft and sale of Libyan antiquities is due to governmental negligence and the weak popular sense of their value, despite UNESCO’s keenness to include some Libyan sites among world heritage areas worthy of protection. The last of these sites was the cemetery of Cyrene in the eastern region, which suffers from continuous looting. The scientific work that was being conducted in the cemetery stopped in the 1990s due to government instability and the security situation in the country.

related

comments