Looted from Türkiye, US authorities seize Marcus Aurelius statue in Ohio museum

WASHINGTON

A headless bronze statue, believed to portray the Roman statesman Marcus Aurelius and suspected to have been looted from Türkiye, has been confiscated by US authorities in an Ohio museum, according to a report Thursday.

The New York Times reported that the statue is currently not on display at the Cleveland Museum of Art, as it was seized earlier this month under a warrant issued by the Manhattan district attorney's office.

The office revealed on Thursday that the confiscation is linked to an "ongoing criminal investigation into a smuggling network involving antiquities looted from Turkey and trafficked through Manhattan."

According to the Times, investigators from New York assessed the headless statue's value at $20 million and estimated its age to be around 1,800 years.

Turkish authorities have communicated to the Cleveland museum that the statue, standing at 6 feet 4 inches tall without its head, was reported stolen during the 1960s from an archaeological site in Bubon, located in southwestern Türkiye.

However, the museum has reportedly rebuffed these assertions, contending that Türkiye lacks concrete evidence of the theft, said the Times.

"The enduring dispute surrounding this matter has kept Marcus Aurelius separated from his hometown for far too long," Zeynep Boz, the head of the Department for Combating Illicit Trafficking at the Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry, told the Times in a statement.

The statue is scheduled to be transported to New York in September.