Looting Matters: Why is Greece Reclaiming so Much Cultural Property?
SWANSEA, England, June 12 /PRNewswire/ -- David Gill, archaeologist, considers the recent returns of antiquities to Greece.
Greece has been stepping up its campaign for the return of recently looted antiquities. One of the most stunning pieces was a gold wreath that appears to have been removed from a grave in Macedonia, northern Greece. This passed through the Swiss market before being acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1993. The same museum has additionally returned a funerary marker that is likely to have been found in Boeotia, central Greece, and a sixth-century BCE marble female statue (known as a kore).
Other pieces have been seized from the market. A bronze statue of a male figure, thought to have been discovered in the sea off Preveza, was recovered in Germany; it is now on display in Athens. A Swiss antiquities dealer handed over a marble funerary marker in the shape of an oil flask (called a lekythos) in the spring of 2008. The piece, purchased at an antiquities fair in Maastricht, Holland, had been identified in photographs found in the possession of smugglers.
In 2008 a North American private collector handed over two items from her collection: the upper part of a marble funerary marker and a bronze wine-mixing vessel (called a krater). The lower part of the marker, showing a warrior and two other figures, had been found in the excavation of a rural cemetery in eastern Attica during the 1960s. This same collector returned nine items to Italy earlier in the year (and a tenth piece is due to follow).
Greek authorities seized a photographic archive of antiquities when they raided a villa on the island of Schinoussa in 2006. The objects need to be identified and such investigations may result in further returns.
