Over the past 75 years, more than a million ancient artifacts have returned to their countries of origin
Over the past 75 years, more than a million ancient artifacts, with a total value of about $2 billion, have been returned to their countries of origin. This was reported by the Financial Times, citing data from the Museum of Looted Antiquities (MOLA) platform.
MOLA is a project of the American non-profit research organization Achilles Research Group. The platform has created a database of cases of cultural property restitution by museums, art dealers, and private collectors. According to the collected data, from 1950 to 2025, 1.06 million items were returned, with a total value of at least $2 billion.
MOLA director Jason Felch noted that the database was intended to bring transparency to a field that has long lacked systematized information. According to him, previously, individual high-profile cases of cultural property restitution were known, but no one compiled them into a comprehensive picture.
As the publication notes, the number of art repatriation cases began to grow in the mid-1990s, with a particularly sharp increase observed since 2020.
According to MOLA data, the USA leads among countries that returned cultural property: during the period under review, they returned a total of 101,000 items.
However, digital heritage researcher and head of the Digital Benin project, Ann Luther, emphasized that even a million returned artifacts must be viewed against the backdrop of a much larger number of items that remain in museums and private collections, despite having been looted or illegally removed.
Among the countries that achieved the highest rates in returning ancient items are Egypt, Italy, and Saudi Arabia. Each of them returned more than 30,000 artifacts during the period covered by the study.
"Doctor", lawyer, man with a camera and several strong guys. In Petropavlivska Borshchahivka, Russian special services took advantage of a specific Ukrainian wartime business 1515
Comments