Looted Antiquities

Sculptures of Buddha dating from the 4th-6th centuries smuggled out of Afghanistan nearly 20 years ago have finally been returned to the country’s national museum.

Christie’s has reiterated that it “carried out extensive due diligence” into a head of Tutankhamun after the Egyptian National Committee for Antiquities Repatriation (NCAR) said that it will instruct a UK law firm to file a lawsuit over its £4m sale.

A group of eight antiquities that was consigned to Christie’s has been returned to Italy after the works were identified as not having the necessary export and provenance details to be sold.

An exceptionally rare Western Zhou bronze, taken when the Summer Palace was sacked by British troops in 1860, has been returned to China.

Eight Sumerian antiquities seized by the Metropolitan Police from a London dealer in 2003 are to be returned to Iraq after identification by the British Museum.

A rare Islamic manuscript consigned to a Bonhams auction in London has been returned to Egypt in the latest example of Egyptian authorities succeeding in retrieving artefacts from abroad.

A coin and antiquities dealer has been arrested as part of an international investigation into a £35m crime network dealing in looted artefacts.

A small bronze figure of a horse from ancient Greece is at the centre of a New York court case after Greece’s ministry of culture demanded its return and stopped its sale at auction.

A database of Egyptian and Nubian antiquities has been launched by the British Museum after it was awarded a government grant of nearly £1m.

Nearly 4000 artefacts smuggled into the US for shipment to the arts-and-crafts retailer Hobby Lobby were returned to Iraq this week.

Antiquities looted from archaeological sites in Libya have been seized in Spain by police and two art dealers have been arrested.

Antiquities looted during the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s are to go on display at the National Museum in Beirut after they were identified in Europe as stolen objects.