Twelve of the thirteen had been in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art until they were seized by this Office earlier this year and voluntarily surrendered. All thirteen seizures were the result of criminal investigations into three separate antiquities trafficking networks.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite our significant progress dismantling these extensive trafficking networks, there is clearly still more work to do. Museums and galleries in Manhattan should not be filled with looting or stolen cultural artifacts,\u201d said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn behalf of the Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt, I extend our sincere appreciation to the New York District Attorney\u2019s Office\u2014particularly the Antiquities Trafficking Unit\u2014for their dedicated efforts and steadfast cooperation in the successful recovery of Egyptian antiquities. This reflects a partnership spanning more than 15 years in combating the illicit trafficking of cultural property. We deeply value this continued cooperation, which is essential to safeguarding Egypt\u2019s rich heritage and ensuring these artifacts are returned to their rightful home for the benefit of future generations,\u201d said Egypt\u2019s Consul General Tamer K. El Miligy.<\/p>\n
Among the pieces returned include the following:<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Block Statue of Ankhwennefer, dated ca. 690-650 BCE, depicts an Egyptian official named Ankhwennefer. The Block Statue was smuggled out of Egypt in the late 1980s by Parisian antiquities dealer Jean-Louis Domercq. It was then brought into New York by convicted antiquities dealer Ed Merrin, and ultimately was sold to The Met in 1993.
\nThe\u00a0Kohl Tube in the Shape of a Monkey, ca. 1550-1450 BCE, is a glazed steatite cosmetics container. It first appeared with Galerie Nefer, a Swiss gallery owned Frieda Tchakos, in 1985 and was purchased by Norbert Schimmel, who donated the Kohl Tube to The Met in 1989.
\nThe\u00a0Figure of Isis-Aphrodite, dated ca. 2nd century CE, is a terracotta depiction of a syncretism between the Egyptian goddess Isis with the Greco-Roman goddess Aphrodite. The Figure first appeared in 1991 with Galerie Nefer before being sold to The Met.<\/p>\n
The Antiquities Trafficking Unit has now recovered more than 6,200 cultural treasures, including rare books, works of art, and antiquities, valued at more than $485 million, and returned more than 5,900 of those so far to 36 countries. The ATU has also convicted 18 individuals of cultural property-related crimes, and the pending extradition of another 7 alleged traffickers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twelve of the thirteen had been in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art until they were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-205937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-manhattan","9":"tag-manhattan-headlines","10":"tag-manhattan-news","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nyc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}