Smuggled 1,800-Year-Old Lydian Atonement Inscription Sent Back To Turkey By Italy

Conny Waters - AncientPages.com - More and more artifacts are returned to the countries they came from.

Recently, antique Tamil Nadu statues were returned by Britain to India, and now, a 1,800-year-old Lydian era atonement inscription returns to Turkey,  after a long legal process.

The artifact was smuggled 23 years ago and later found in Italy.

The inscription was seized in 1997 during a raid by an Italian anti-smuggling unit at an antiques merchant's workplace. Image credit: AA

Turkey was reunited with the historical inscription stolen from the ancient city of Saitta in Manisa province in the 1990s due to the efforts of the Culture and Tourism Ministry.

The inscription contains an atonement that was common in the Lydian era, associate professor Yusuf Sezgin, an archaeologist from Manisa’s Celal Bayar University told Anadolu Agency (AA). Sezgin said that the inscription contained “regrets” of parents whose sons were 'punished' by god for stealing a fishing net.

After the inscription was handed over to ministry officials, it was loaded on a Turkish Airlines plane taking off from Rome and was brought to Istanbul Airport.

Preserved in a special box, the historical artifact was unloaded from the plane and was received by Rahmi Asal, head of the Istanbul Archaeology Museums Directorate reports Anadolu Agency.

Following its inspection, the inscription was placed in a freight vehicle under the supervision of the authorities. The historical inscription will be sent to the capital Ankara as it is scheduled to be displayed at the Anatolian Civilizations Museum.

source

The artifact was seized in 1997 during a raid by an Italian anti-smuggling unit at an antiques merchant's workplace.

Italian authorities reported the situation to Turkey on suspicion that it might belong to the Lydians, an Anatolian civilization, and Turkey's Culture and Tourism Ministry confirmed the inscription was smuggled from the Apollon Aksyros Temple in the ancient city of Saitta in Manisa province.

The ministry launched a long legal battle for the return of the inscription in 1998 and presented evidence that showed it was smuggled from Turkey. But an Italian court ruled against Turkey in 2012 and Ankara appealed. A decision was suspended in 2013. The Florence Court of Appeals ruled Nov. 5, 2019, that it belongs to Turkey, setting off a return process to the country.

Turkey successfully retrieved 4,441 artifacts in the past 18 years and recently boosted its capacity for tracking and retrieval of artifacts smuggled from the country, according to Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy.

Turkey’s Ambassador to Rome Murat Saim Esenli and an accompanying delegation received the artifact from Claudio Mauti, an Italian officer in charge of the anti-smuggling department, in Florence, Italy on Sept. 19.

Written by Conny Waters - AncientPages.com Staff Writer