Cool Finds

See a Stunning Collection of Stolen Greek Artifacts, Spanning 5,000 Years, That Were Just Returned to Greece

The antiquities were seized at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by investigators from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr.

Sonja Anderson | Daily Correspondent

September 25, 2026 8:00 a.m.

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Fifteen ancient Greek artifacts of bronze, marble and clay—dating back almost five millennia and valued at nearly $3 million—have been returned to their home country. Among them are pieces of Archaic jewelry, a bust of a Roman emperor’s divine spirit, and helmets decorated with horses and winged men. 

The artifacts constitute the latest roundup and repatriation of Greek antiquities by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Greece’s minister of culture, Lina Mendoni, accepted the 15 items at a ceremonial handover in Manhattan on September 21. 

“Today is a particularly important day for Greece, but not only for Greece,” Mendoni said at the event, according to the National Herald’s Yanna Katsageorgi. “The crime of antiquities trafficking and the illegal trade in cultural property concerns all of us—all nations.” 

Assistant D.A. Matthew Bogdanos, who leads the office’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, said at the ceremony that since 2011, the unit has recovered and repatriated more than 6,400 antiquities to 40 countries. Per a statement from the office, 175 of those artifacts belonged to Greece. Bogdanos said they have a combined value of some $51.5 million.

“Their true value is far more timeless,” Bogdanos said, per the National Herald. “Freedom, justice, honor, kindness, democracy, beauty.” 

Highlights of the recent haul include five bronze military artifacts: two engraved helmets and three waist guards, all decoratively engraved and embossed. One helmet boasts detailed etchings of dogs, flowers, and a man wearing wings and grasping a twisting serpent. One of the waist guards depicts two identical horses and is inscribed with Greek letters. According to a statement from the Greek Ministry of Culture, the armor dates to the late seventh century B.C.E. It was unearthed in Heraklion, Crete—also known as Iraklio—during a large, illegal excavation in 1964. 

“It is particularly important that some of the artifacts we are taking delivery of today will be reunited with finds from the same excavation in the archaeological museum of Iraklio,” Mendoni says in the statement, per a translation by the Greek City Times. “Some of these were illegally trafficked abroad and are now returning home.” 

The collection’s oldest objects—a marble figurine depicting a woman and a marble cap belonging to a compass—date to around 2700 B.C.E. One painted pottery vessel, a beaked jug, dates to around 1750 B.C.E. The cache also includes a bronze bracelet dating to the seventh century B.C.E., during Greece’s Archaic period, and a Hellenistic gold necklace from the second century B.C.E. The youngest of the 15 objects is a marble bust, and it’s actually Roman. Depicting Genius Augusti, the “divine spirit” of a Roman emperor, the bust was made between about 14 C.E. and 68 C.E.—during the reign of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius or Nero. 

All of these objects were “smuggled into the United States and laundered by dealers and collectors through false provenance, exhibitions and museum donations,” according to the D.A. The office seized them from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since 2017, investigators have removed more than $95 million worth of artifacts belonging to countries like Egypt, Turkey and Syria from the Met, the New York Times’ Graham Bowley and Tom Mashberg reported in June. After the latest seizure this summer, the Met affirmed that it had given over the artifacts in collaboration with the attorney’s office, and that it has expanded its team of provenance researchers. Lucian Simmons, the Met’s head of provenance research, said in a statement, “The Met doesn’t want any stolen art in our collection.” 

Bogdanos, however, pointed out recurring artifact seizures at the Met. “The question has to be asked, ‘Why are we the ones doing this?’” he told the Times. 

In a 2023 interview with Columbia Law School, his alma mater, Bogdanos decried the illegal antiquities trade, empowered by illicit digs like the one performed in Crete in the ’60s: “What part of our shared cultural heritage will we never find out because of that looting? All of that history is gone because a looter just digs a hole.” 

Sonja Anderson is a daily correspondent for Smithsonian magazine who covers art, archaeology and culture, from newly discovered artifacts to the latest art heists.