Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1995 - 62

Turkey has used fundamental principles of AngloAmerican common law as the basis for its cases in the
United States, claiming that the antiquities involved are
stolen property and that a thief cannot convey tide. It
bases its ownership of these antiquities on Turkish laws
that, since at least 1906, have established its proprietary
interest in all antiquities found in or on its territory.
Or Turkey's victories so far, the most impressive has
been the repatriation of the Lydian Hoard, also known
as the Croesus, Lydian, or East Greek treasure, in
October of 1993. The return ended a 25-year effort to
recover the material and a six-year legal struggle with
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Consisting
of 363 artifacts - gold and silver vessels and jewelry, a
- the
pair of marble sphinxes, and wall paintings
"hoard" came from several sixth-century B.C. burial
mounds in the Manisa and Usak regions of Turkey
that were plundered in early 1966. (Authorities later
recovered about 100 objects that were left behind.)
The looters were arrested and prosecuted. Some confessed and later assisted in attempts to trace the hoard,
which had been sitiuggled out of Turkey and sold to
dealers George Zacos of Switzerland and John Klejman of New York. The Metropolitan purchased the
antiquities between 1966 and 1970 for $1.5 million. It
made no formal announcement of the purchase, and,
as late as 1986, provided no information about the
hoard in its central catalogue, a public inventory of its
holdings.
According to Karl E. Meyer's investigative study of
the illicit antiquities market, The PlunderedPast (1973),
the Metropolitan had plans to unveil the treasure in its
1970 centennial year. An article in the Boston Globe,
however, hinted that the museum had acquired a
Lydian treasure. This prompted a request for information from a Turkish official, which the museum apparently ignored. Plans to exhibit the entire hoard were
dropped, but the museum did display a silver wine
pitcher and four other pieces in the show "Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries." The five objects were omitted from the exhibition catalogue, and were returned
to the museum's vault after the show closed. A second
inquiry by Turkey followed a 1973 article in the New
York Post that again brought up rumors of a Lydian
treasure at the Metropolitan, but it, too, received no
response.
Former Metropolitan director Thomas Hoving, in
his 1993 memoir, Making the Mummies Dance, gives an
account of an acquisitions committee meeting dealing
*with the Lydian hoard, indicating that the museum
knew where the treasure came from:

for two marble sphinxesthat had comefrom the tomb in Anatolia where the treasurehad been unearthed.Curator Dietrich von
Bothmerexplainedthat the works constitutedthefinal pieces of
what he describedas the "Lydian hoard.33
Hoving describes a subsequent meeting with vice-director Theodore Rousseau, John Buchanan (his assistant),
von Bothmer, and Ashton Hawkins (the Metropolitan's
legal counsel) to plan their response to Turkish inquiries:
Dietrich von Bothmerasked what we should do if any damaging
evidencewerefound that our East Greektreasurehad beenexcavated illegallyand smuggledout of Turkey... . I was exasperated.
"We all believethe stuff was illegally dug up," I told him.
"Drew Oliver [curator Andrew Oliver]has strong evidence.He
went to the tomb and says he identifiedthe lowerparts of the
pair of sphinxeswhich are now hidden in your storeroom.For
Chriss sake, if the Turks come up with the prooffrom thdr
side, we'll give the East Greektreasureback. And thas policy.
We tookour chanceswhen we boughtthe material.99

The museum's policy was, simply, not to help the
Turkish investigation, but to return the hoard if the
Turks could prove it had come from the tombs in Usak.
After the retirement of Metropolitan president C. Douglas Dillon in 1983, Hoving claims, "the museum bent
and ultimately broke that policy, and when the proof
was forthcoming, the Met persistently refused even to
discuss the return or sharing of the treasure...."
In June 1984 the Metropolitan finally displayed
more than 40 of the objects as a group, labeling them
the East Greek Treasure, and described them in a catalogue titled A Greekand Roman Treasury.With the cata* logue's photographs, Turkish authorities were able to
establish, for the first time, that the museum's pieces
were Lydian and were similar to the objects they had
recovered from the thieves. Turkey began building its
case, rechecking the tumuli, re-interviewing the looters,
and obtaining customs documents.
In 1985, and again in 1986, the Metropolitan
attempted a legal "end run" by sponsoring a bill in the
New York state legislature that would have changed
the time at which the clock began running on the
state's three-year statute of limitations regarding stolen
antiquities: from three years after the first demand for
the return of an object by its owner and a refusal of
that demand by its possessor to three years after the
first public notification of the acquisition of an object.
The museum apparently hoped that such legislation
would block any claim Turkey made to the hoard. The
bill was vetoed both years by Governor Mario Cuomo,
who argued that its "provisions do not provide a reasonable opportunity for individuals or foreign governments to receive notice... before their rights are
Houghton[trusteeArthur Houghton,Sr.] swiftly cut in to move
ratificationof two appropriations
for Greekand Romanpurchases
extinguished."
made beforemy arrival, the last remainingobjectsin a hoard of
In July 1986 Turkey's Director General of AntiquiGreeksixth centuryB.C.silverfound in Turkey- $14,500 for a
ties and Monuments, in a letter to the Metropolitan,
gold ring, a silveralabastron, and a silver beaker, and $25,000
formally demanded the return of the Lydian Hoard. A

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