An ancient marble sculpture of a bull’s head got stolen from Lebanon during the civil war. The 2,400-year-old statue has been excavated from the Temple of Eshmun in 1967 in Sidon and looted later in summer 1981.
The Lebanese Ministry of Culture announced that the Office of the New York County District Attorney in the United States notified them about the stolen sculpture that it has been seized in July 2017.
In fact, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art returned the sculpture which was on loan after it was suspected that it might be stolen. The statue belongs to William and Lynda Beierwaltes who bought it for over $1 million in 1996 before selling it to the collector Michael H. Steinhardt in 2015.
According to sources, the Beierwaltes owned a piece of antiquity that was also stolen from Lebanon. It is the sculpture of a person carrying a calf that was also sold to Mr. Steinhardt.
After learning that the antiquities have been stolen, the collector asked the Beierwaltes to take them back.
The Office of the New York County District Attorney, the Lebanese Ministry of Culture, and the U.S. Embassy of Lebanon are cooperating to return the sculptures to where they belong safely.
Many antiquities were stolen during the civil war. The Ministry of Culture is actively working on repatriating the artifacts to Lebanon.
