Hot on the heels of an ancient terra-cotta vase being seized from the Greco-Roman galleries at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, a second objet has just been handed over to the district attorney's office: an ancient bull's head carved from marble that is thought to have been looted from a storage area in Lebanon during the country's civil war in the 1880s.
The 2,300-year-old marble sculpture is just about a foot tall and is believed to be of Greek origin. It was on loan to the Met from its owners, Lynda and William Beierwaltes of Colorado, who believe they have clear title to the item and are pressing charges to secure its return, as they claim there is no sufficient evidence that the sculpture was stolen.
Concerns were first raised last year when one of the Met's curators researched the item and discovered that it may have been part of a looting spree in the city of Byblos. The museum's spokesperson, Kenneth Weine, said in a statement: "Upon a Met curator's discovery that this item on loan may have been stolen from government storage during the Lebanese civil war, the Museum took immediate action. We contacted the Lebanese government and the lender, we took the item off display, and we have been working with federal and state authorities, which recently involved delivering the Head of the Bull to the Manhattan DA upon its request."
This is the second time in two weeks that the museum has been asked to turn an item from its collection over to the authorities. Last week a large painted vase that had been illegally excavated from an ancient burial ground in Italy was handed over to the district attorney—thought to have been trafficked by Giacomo Medici, the Italian art dealer who was convicted in 2004 of the same crime.
The vase first raised concerns of provenance a few years back when a forensic archeologist made a startling recognition while browsing the museum's online collection. The archaeologist, who works with the University of Glasgow's Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, had seen the ancient Greek clay vase in the restricted database that houses photographs and documents seized during raids, and was sure the vase in the famed museum was the same artifact. The vessel, known as a krater, was used in ancient times to mix water and wine, and displays Dionysus, god of the grape harvest, riding in a cart.
Both the vase and the bull's head sculpture are now sitting in the evidence room at the DA's office while the investigations continue.