The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has announcement the return of two statues, collectively valued at $1.26 million, to their rightful home in Libya. Artifacts, Marble face of a Ptolemaic queen And female bustwere stolen from the ancient city of Cyrene, located near present-day Shahhat, and smuggled by a notorious British art trafficker Robin Syme, whose historic role in liaising with antiquities smuggling rings around the world spans decades and jurisdictions. Symes had acquired the two sculptures for his personal collection, hiding them in a New York cabinet for more than 20 years.
During recent excavations in Libya, archaeologists discovered what they believe to be the torso originally belonging to female bust in a tomb at Cyrene. The bust was an important funerary relief intended to decorate the necropolis of Cyrene.
“It is shameful that these beautiful pieces have been stored away for decades by a convicted trafficker,” District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement. “Cyrene has faced significant looting, but thanks to the work of our Antiquities Trafficking Unit and our Homeland Security partners, we have now returned several pieces of this ancient city to the Libyan people. We continue to conduct ongoing investigations into the stolen Libyan artifacts and look forward to more repatriation ceremonies in the future.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has repatriated five antiquities to Libya, worth nearly $3 million, since 2022. During Bragg’s tenure, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit returned more than 2,475 pieces to 24 countries, with a collective value of over $235 million.
Symes, 84, is responsible for countless sales of looted items to private collectors and institutions around the world. While his professional downfall began in the 2000s with asset disputes with the family of his late partner, Christo Michaelides, it is the raid 2016 of its storage unit in Geneva Freeport in Switzerland which presented to the general public its enormous treasure of 17,000 looted Roman and Etruscan antiquities. Earlier this summer, 750 artifactsmore than half of which came from the Neolithic or Byzantine eras, were repatriated to Italy after a long legal battle with Symes.
