A 2000-year-old statue is slated to return to Libya, its original excavation site, after nearly 84 years.
According to CNN on the 1st, the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) recently announced through a press release that they will return a basalt statue from the Ptolemaic era that they have kept since 1991 back to Libya. The museum explained, “Considering the rarity of the carved stone statue with almost no exact replicas, the strong resemblance between the statue donated to the CMA in 1991 and the artifact described and depicted in 1950, and the circumstances of war in Libya, we have concluded that this artifact belongs to Libya.”
This statue, which is about two feet tall and represents a bearded man dressed in contemporary attire, was discovered during the 1937~1938 excavation of the Ptolemaic Palace in Cyrenaica of eastern Libya.
The statue was kept in the local Ptolemaic Museum and was lost around 1941 when the U.K. occupied the region. In 1960, the statue was moved to Lucerne, Switzerland. From 1966 to 1991, it remained in the private collection of New York art collectors Lawrence and Barbara Fleischman, until it was donated to the museum in 1991.
Head of the Department of Antiquities of Libya Mohamed Faraj expressed his gratitude in the press release, saying, “We appreciate the willingness of the Cleveland Museum of Art to cooperate in accomplishing the transfer of this important work,” adding, “We look forward to continued cooperation with the museum.”