Overview
- The 22 objects were handed over at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens on Tuesday in a ceremony led by Culture Minister Lina Mendoni and representatives of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
- The collection includes Attic and Corinthian pottery and a small bronze female statuette provisionally dated between about 700 B.C. and 320 B.C.
- Israeli officials said the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Theft Prevention Unit located the items during an investigation, though Greek and Israeli authorities did not disclose exactly how the objects were found or the details of their removal from Greece.
- Some reports state the pieces were seized in 2020 from warehouses in central Israel and returned after legal proceedings and confiscation, and Israeli enforcement agencies said the case involved coordinated inspections of galleries, warehouses and private sites.
- Greek ministers framed the handover as a precedent for closer heritage cooperation and said it strengthens Athens’s wider restitution push, including renewed pressure for the return of the Parthenon Marbles.