15 ancient Greek artifacts returned home: bronze helmets were seized at the Metropolitan Museum of New York

Fifteen ancient Greek artifacts of bronze, marble and clay, nearly five thousand years old and worth about $3 million, were returned to Greece this week. The objects were seized at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York by investigators of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr.’s office, through the Antiquities Trafficking Unit, as Smithsonian Magazine reports.

Greece’s Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, took delivery of the 15 objects at an official ceremony in Manhattan on September 21, 2026. “Today is a particularly important day for Greece, but not only for Greece. The crime of antiquities trafficking and the illicit trade in cultural property concerns us all — all nations,” she declared.

The pearls of this collection are five bronze battle armors — two engraved helmets and three belt guards, decorated with engravings and decorative stampings. One helmet is engraved with dogs, flowers and a winged figure grasping a coiled snake, while one guard depicts two identical horses and bears Greek letters. According to Greece’s Ministry of Culture, the armor dates to the late 7th century BCE and was discovered in Heraklion, Crete, during a major illegal excavation in 1964. Some of the pieces will be reunited with finds from the same excavation at the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion.

The oldest objects are a marble figurine of a woman and a marble lid, both from around 2700 BCE; a painted vessel with a bird-beak spout from around 1750 BCE; a bronze bracelet from the Archaic period of the 7th century BCE and a Hellenistic gold necklace from the 2nd century BCE. The newest is a marble bust of “Genius Augusti” — the divine spirit of a Roman emperor — crafted between 14 and 68 CE.

Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos, head of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit, announced that since 2011 the unit has recovered and repatriated more than 6,400 antiquities to 40 countries worldwide; 175 of them belonged to Greece, with a combined value of about $51.5 million. According to investigators, the objects were smuggled into the United States and “laundered” by dealers and collectors through false provenances, exhibitions and museum donations. Since 2017, investigators have removed artifacts worth over $95 million from the Met.

The Metropolitan Museum says it handed over the objects in cooperation with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and has expanded its provenance research team. The Met’s head of provenance research, Lucian Simmons, said: “The Met does not want any stolen work in our collection.” This is a separate case from the one reported earlier, when the museum voluntarily returned eight artifacts to Greece and facilitated the return of three works to Nigeria.