Fifty priceless artifacts looted from Egypt and Pakistan — and trafficked by Manhattan by two infamous antiquities sellers — have been returned to their residence international locations, the Manhattan District Lawyer’s Workplace has introduced.
The repatriation of the artifacts, a few of that are as previous 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 some of the 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 had been returned to Egypt and 39 to Pakistan.
Among the many artifacts returned had been a “mummy mask of a youth,” a funerary masks relationship 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 purple, black and blue fish — relationship to between 3300 and 1300 BCE — seized from a Manhattan vendor 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 to date to 30 international locations, in accordance with the DA’s workplace.
Initially Revealed: June 1, 2025 at 10:35 PM EDT
