NEW YORK, NEW YORK—According to an ArtNews report, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will transfer ownership of two artifacts in its collection to Yemen, although the artifacts will remain at the institution for now. The objects, dated to the third millennium B.C., were looted from the ancient city of Marib about 40 years ago and acquired by the museum in the late 1990s. One is a sculpture of a female figure wearing a strap necklace; the other is a rectangular mortar made of veined marble. “We are delighted that Yemen is reclaiming ownership of its precious and priceless cultural heritage,” said Ambassador of the Republic of Yemen Mohammed Al-Hadhrami. “Due to the current situation in Yemen, it is not the appropriate time to return these artifacts back to our homeland,” he concluded. Yemen has been experiencing civil war since 2014. To read about artifacts from Tutankhamun’s tomb that the Metropolitan Museum of Art repatriated to Egypt in 2010, go to “The Case of Tut’s Missing Collar.”

Source: archaeology.org