Fifty priceless artifacts looted from Egypt and Pakistan — and trafficked via Manhattan by two infamous antiquities sellers — have been returned to their dwelling international locations, the Manhattan District Lawyer’s Workplace has introduced.
The repatriation of the artifacts, a few of that are as outdated as 3300 BCE, is the results of two separate investigations into felony trafficking networks linked to the convicted traffickers Robin Symes and Subhash Kapoor, respectively.
Symes, who died in 2023, was probably the most infamous antiquities smugglers within the final century. Kapoor, 76, was convicted of working a $100 million worldwide smuggling racket, together with stealing 19 historical idols and illegally transferring them to his artwork gallery in Manhattan.
In complete, 11 artifacts have been returned to Egypt and 39 to Pakistan.
Among the many artifacts returned have been a “mummy mask of a youth,” a funerary masks courting to the Roman rule of Egypt, round 100-300 CE, one of many “Fayum Portraits” well-known for his or her realism and modernity.
A terracotta vessel with painted crimson, black and blue fish — courting to between 3300 and 1300 BCE — seized from a Manhattan supplier in 2025 has been returned to Pakistan.
Since its creation in 2017, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit has convicted 17 people of cultural property-related crimes, recovered greater than 6,000 antiquities valued at greater than $470 million, and has returned greater than 5,500 of them thus far to 30 international locations, in keeping with the DA’s workplace.
Initially Printed: June 1, 2025 at 10:35 PM EDT
