The Department of Museums Monitoring Antiquities in Benghazi announced that it had received an important artefact represented by a church bell dating back to 1932.
The Benghazi Antiquities Monitor indicated that the Libyan citizen, Khalifa Al-Kawafi, a resident of the city of Al-Marj, and the owner of a hardware store, obtained the historical piece by purchasing it from a Sudanese national.
The Benghazi Antiquities Controller, Hani Al-Abdali, said that the bell is a historical piece.
The delivery was made with an official report written by Ibrahim Bouchaala, the Head of the Department of Museums Monitoring Antiquities in Benghazi.
Earlier this month, the Libyan Embassy in Washington D.C. confirmed that it is organising the return of a marble funerary statue to Libya, after it was looted several years ago.
In press statements, the Embassy indicated that the Antiquities Anti-Trafficking Office in New York informed them that the federal investigations into the looted statue have ended. It explained that the statue is that of Greek goddess, Persephone and was stolen from the eastern Libyan city of Shahat. There was an attempt to sell the statue at an auction, during an exhibition in New York.
The Libyan Embassy pointed out that the investigations lasted nearly three years, and led to extensive cooperation with the United States (US) State Department to secure the return of the statue back to Libya. The Chargé d’Affairs, Khaled Daief will travel to New York to attend a ceremony on January 12th, to receive the looted statue, before transferring it to Libya.
This is the second stolen artefact to be returned to Libya in recent years. A second century BC figure, some 2,200 years old, was seized at London’s Heathrow airport several years ago, after being illicitly imported, according to a press release from the British Museum.
In 2013, experts from the museum were called upon to help identify the item, and immediately informed the United Kingdom tax authority, the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), of its historical importance and origins. According to the museum, this type of statue is relatively easy to identify as its manufacture was restricted to workshops in Cyrenaica, ancient Libya. Cyrenaica was settled by the Greeks in the 7th century BC. Around 100 statues of this type have been found in the area, although only the heads survive in more than 50 percent of cases, said the museum.