Media: Greece recovers hundreds of stolen artifacts including Alexander’s statue

It took a 17-year legal battle but hundreds of looted artifacts, including a 2nd-Century bronze statue of Alexander the Great will be returned to Greece from a British antiquities dealer, Robin Symes, who had them.

Symes had amassed thousands of pieces of stolen art from unlawful traders, including 351 from Greece, Culture Minister Lina Mendoni announcing they would finally be repatriated, said the BBC.

Greece has for years been fighting to recover stolen treasures from museums and private holders, although agreeing to a deal for only a gradual return over decades of 161 artifacts from the collection of New York billionaire Leonard Stern.

The British Museum, which houses the stolen Parthenon Marbles, also said it won’t return them but is offering Greece a loan – if Greece puts up other treasures to be displayed and held hostage to ensure their return.

Mendoni did not say if the artifacts in Symes’ collection were tied to the discovery by Italian and Swiss police in 2016 of a haul of archaeological treasures he was said to have kept at a Swiss freeport.

In March, the Vatican returned three fragments of Athens’ Parthenon temple it had kept for centuries, raising hopes – quickly dashed – that the British Museum would finally relent and send back the stolen Marbles.

The pieces being returned from Symes’ collections include a Neolithic-era statuette of white stone (4th millennium BC), an Early Cycladic (3200-2700 BC) figurine, a broken marble statue of an Archaic kore (550-500 BC), a broken bronze statue of Alexander the Great at a young age (late 2nd century AD), and an Archaic marble head of a kore or a sphinx (550-500 BC).

Mendoni said the fight to get them back began in 2006 when Greek authorities started investigating the Robin Symes company although it wasn’t explained why it had taken so long to get back stolen goods.

Read more at thenationalherald.com

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