U.S. Repatriates Artifacts to Lebanon

News September 10, 2023

(Manhattan District Attorney's Office)
SHARE:
Lebanon Castor Pollux Statues
(Manhattan District Attorney's Office)

NEW YORK, NEW YORK—The New York Times reports that 12 antiquities were repatriated to Lebanon this week by New York and federal authorities. The artifacts, recovered from private collections, include twin marble sculptures of the Greek mythological figures Castor and Pollux dated to the fourth century A.D.; a bronze statuette of a man pouring a libation dated to the first century A.D.; and nine mosaics depicting gods, gladiators, and mythical beasts. “These pieces sat in apartments, storage units and museums when they should have been in Lebanon,” said Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., the Manhattan district attorney. The objects were recovered during ongoing investigations conducted by the D.A.’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit and U.S. Homeland Security Investigations. To read about massive stones uncovered at a 2,000-year-old quarry in Lebanon's Bekka Valley, go to "History's Largest Megalith."

  • Features July/August 2023

    An Elegant Enigma

    The luxurious possessions of a seventeenth-century woman continue to intrigue researchers a decade after they were retrieved from a shipwreck

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Museum Kaapskil)
  • Features July/August 2023

    Rise of the Persian Princes

    In their grand capital Persepolis, Achaemenid rulers expressed their vision of a prosperous, multicultural empire

    Read Article
    (Borna_Mir/ Adobe Stock)
  • Letter from Patagonia July/August 2023

    Surviving a Windswept Land

    For 13,000 years, hunter-gatherers thrived in some of the world’s harshest environments

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Raven Garvey)
  • Artifacts July/August 2023

    Norse Gold Bracteate

    Read Article
    (Arnold Mikkelsen, National Museum of Denmark)