A 1,000-pound funerary relief carved in ancient Palmyra during the late second century CE is finally heading home, one of 36 looted Syrian antiquities that Manhattan prosecutors handed back to Syria in a ceremony this week. The full haul, valued at more than $5 million, also includes 14 mosaics stripped from a Syrian Roman villa and three Syro-Hittite female idols carved in northwest Syria during the 2nd millennium BCE. Together they are part of a years-long crackdown on the international trade in looted Middle Eastern treasures.
District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced the return in a Wednesday post on X, according to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office
. In a companion press release, Bragg said repatriation ceremonies are “a powerful reminder that preserving cultural heritage transcends any border or nationality.” The office's Antiquities Trafficking Unit says it seized 31 of the returned pieces after they were allegedly trafficked into New York, with 13 of those objects coming out of the Metropolitan Museum of Art alone.
A Relief Smuggled Through Dubai
The Palmyran relief, removed from the ancient city of Palmyra, was shipped from Dubai to New York in 2011, according to the release from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. Palmyra became a global symbol of wartime cultural destruction after ISIS organized the systematic looting of the site's archaeological treasures and destroyed portions of the ancient city between 2015 and 2017. The relief was among 24 antiquities seized in 2021 from two of Georges Lotfi's storage units, a haul that also included a 3rd-century BCE mosaic depicting the mythological wedding of Telete and Eros, accompanied by Aphrodite and the Three Graces.
That seizure traces back to Georges Lotfi, an antiquities dealer who served as a source for the Manhattan DA's Antiquities Trafficking Unit and first contacted the unit about the gold sarcophagus at the Met in March 2018, according to the Observer. Lotfi is now the subject of an arrest warrant the Manhattan DA's office obtained in 2022 and an Interpol Red Notice issued in 2023. According to The Art Newspaper, the 24 antiquities were held in New Jersey storage; the Observer reported that Lotfi gave investigators a key to a New Jersey storage locker. Lotfi has denied allegations, while prosecutors allege he tried to use his relationship with investigators to validate false provenance.
Ties to a Billionaire Collector and a Convicted Smuggler
Four of the 36 returned pieces, including the three Syro-Hittite idols, were seized from the collection of billionaire Michael Steinhardt. The idols first appeared on the art market in the late 1980s and early 1990s and were sold to Steinhardt by dealer Edward Merrin, who operated the Merrin Gallery in Manhattan and has since been convicted of antiquities-trafficking related crimes, per Hyperallergic. The December 2021 deferred prosecution agreement covered antiquities valued at $70 million and carried an unprecedented lifetime ban on Steinhardt purchasing ancient artifacts, according to the Associated Press.
Another thread in the case runs through Eugene Alexander, who was convicted in 2025 for his role in New York's illicit antiquities trade. The Antiquities Trafficking Unit itself was founded in 2017 by Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos, a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel who previously led the 2003 international investigation into the pillaging of Iraq's National Museum in Baghdad, according to TIME.
A Museum Under Repeated Scrutiny
The Met's role keeps recurring in these cases. The Manhattan DA's office says it has seized 402 antiquities from the museum since 2017, together valued at $98.7 million, a pattern that has pushed major institutions toward tighter provenance checks after repeated law enforcement seizures. The Syrian handoff follows other major recoveries and repatriations by Bragg's office.
Mohamad Naser Kanatri, who serves as Chargé d'Affaires of the Embassy of the Syrian Arab Republic in Washington, D.C., said Syrian-American cooperation helped return part of Syria's history home, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency.
A Broader Pattern of Recoveries
Matthew Bogdanos has estimated that the Antiquities Trafficking Unit recovered about 6,350 artifacts worth nearly $500 million and repatriated nearly 6,000 to 38 countries. Extradition proceedings remain pending for seven alleged traffickers connected to the unit's broader casework. The Syrian return was part of the unit's broader work.
