U.S. Museum Agrees to Return Ptolemaic Statue to Libya

CLEVELAND, OHIO—According to a New York Times report, the Cleveland Museum of Art has agreed to return a 2,200-year-old sculpture to Libya. The two-foot-tall basalt carving of a striding man was discovered in a storage jar unearthed at the site of a Greek palace in eastern Libya in the 1930s. It was put on display and photographed in Libya’s Ptolemais Museum, which was located near the site, before it was stolen in the 1940s during World War II. The statue reappeared in Switzerland in the early 1960s, and it was eventually acquired by an art dealer who donated it to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1991. “We look forward to continued cooperation with the Museum,” said Mohamed Faraj Mohamed of Libya’s Department of Antiquities. To read about 10,000-year-odl faunal remains recovered from a rock shelter in southwestern Libya, go to "Around the World: Libya."