Raiders of the Lost Arts

Seems like this was a weekend of repatriations and returned artifacts. The CBC reports that Jordan handed over nearly 2,500 stolen ancient artifacts to Iraq, most of which were smuggled out of the country by looters following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Many of the artifacts have been turning up at art auctions around the world, and are believed to have been taken from the national museum in Baghdad, or looted from archeolgoical sites.

Otherwise, in today’s El Pais, a story detailing how the United States returned 900 pieces to Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (National Institute of Anthropology and History). These 900 pieces are but a part of the 19,000 pieces recovered by Mexico in the last five years, most of the 19,000 from the U.S. alone. Mexico notes however that none of these 900 pieces were stolen from either museums or private collections, but rather were extracted from caves, small excavation sites, and non-archeological locations.