Manhattan prosecutors have taken custody of an ancient bull’s head that was on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art over concerns that the antiquity was robbed from a Lebanese storage area in the 1980s during Lebanon’s civil war.
The New York Times said in an article that Met officials noted that one of their curators raised concerns about the artifact after researching it last year, prompting the museum to alert Lebanese officials, who asked the American authorities to step in and retrieve it.
The artifact, which is a 2,300-year-old marble artwork, was turned over to the office of the Manhattan district attorney Cyrus R. Vance last month by museum officials.
The owners of the foot-tall bull’s head are Lynda and William Beierwaltes of Colorado. They bought it from a dealer in London in 1996 for more than $1 million and then sold it to another collector, Michael H. Steinhardt, in 2010, who in turn lent the relic to the Met that year.
Mr. Steinhardt asked the Beierwaltes to take the piece back and compensate him after he learned that Lebanon is disputing its provenance.
The Beierwaltes are also suing the antiquities directorate in Lebanon as part of a federal lawsuit in which they argue that neither the Lebanese government nor Manhattan prosecutors have offered convincing proof that the item was stolen.
For more details, watch the full report in the video above