Five Egyptian Antiquities Worth IDR 43.3 Billion Seized From New York Museum

Ilustrasi The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York. (Wikimedia Commons/Hugo Schneider)

JAKARTA - Manhattan authorities, United States confiscated five Egyptian antiquities from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), as part of an international trade investigation involving the former head of the Louvre in Paris, France.

The Manhattan District Attorney's Office said the five confiscated artifacts were worth more than $3 million or equivalent to Rp.43,300,500,000.

The seizure of the historical items was ordered by a New York State judge on May 19, court documents show. The items include a group of painted linen fragments depicting scenes from the Book of Exodus, dating to between AD 250 and 450.

The Book of Exodus painting is worth $1.6 million. Also among the five works is a portrait of a woman between AD 54 and 68 which is valued at US$1.2 million.

A prosecutor's representative told AFP they were linked to an investigation in Paris in which Jean-Luc Martinez, who ran the Louvre from 2013 to 2021, was charged last week with complicity in fraud and "concealing the origin of works obtained criminally by false confessions."

"The pieces were confiscated under a warrant," he said, as reported by The National News June 3.

The scam allegedly involved several other art experts, according to the French investigative weekly Le Canard Enchaine.

The five pieces seized from the Met were purchased by the museum between 2013 and 2015, according to The Art Newspaper, which first reported the news.

Meanwhile, a Met spokesman referred to an earlier statement in which the museum said it was a "victim of an international criminal organization" when contacted, according to AFP.

In 2019, the museum returned priest Nedjemankh's sarcophagus to Egypt, after New York prosecutors ruled the artifact had been stolen during the 2011 uprising against President Hosni Mubarak.

The Met bought the coffin in 2017 and later said the museum had fallen victim to false statements and false documentation.

Several of the people charged in the case, including Roben Dib, who owns a gallery in Hamburg, Germany and is currently in custody, were involved in selling the sarcophagus to the Met, according to a 2019 report by the Manhattan District Attorney.