Stay Connected
Atlanta Black Star/Africa
AfricaNewsWorld

Artifacts and Antiques Worth Nearly $100 Million Shipped from Egypt and Turkey to the U.S.

Posted byBy Lena D | Published on: CommentsComments (0)

This 2,000-year-old Egyptian sarcophagus was found by U.S. law enforcement and was returned to Egypt in 2011. LUIS MARTINEZ/U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT

About $50 million worth of artifacts and antiques were shipped from both Egypt and Turkey to the United States in 2016 — the highest annual value from each of those countries in at least 20 years, according to U.S. Census Bureau documents.

The artifacts, totaling about $100 million between the two countries, were imported “for consumption” and not for temporary display in a museum, the documents say. Most of the artifacts were shipped to New York City, where numerous antiquities dealers, auction houses and art galleries are based. It can be difficult to determine whether a shipment of artifacts was recently looted, law enforcement officials told Live Science.

In addition, the actual resale value of the shipments may be higher because the values seen in the documents are simply those that importers declared, a spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said. Audits are occasionally conducted on shipments, but the spokesperson declined to say how often they occur.

Egypt has experienced extensive looting since the country’s 2011 revolution. The looting is linked to the deaths of children (who were killed while working in narrow looting shafts) and antiquities guards (who were shot dead while trying to protect sites). An agreement between the United States and Egypt designed to curtail the antiquities trade was signed in November 2016 and went into effect near the end of that year.

Meanwhile, Turkey shares a vast border with both Iraq and Syria, two countries that have experienced heavy looting as a result of ongoing wars. Last year, a Live Science investigation revealed that artifact shipments between Turkey and the U.S. increased after Iraq was invaded in 2003, and then increased further after the civil war in Syria started in 2011. Scholars and multiple governments including the United States have documented that artifacts are being sent from Iraq and Syria to Turkey before being sold abroad. Additionally, a coup attempt occurred in Turkey in July 2016, although scholars and law enforcement officials declined to speculate on whether the coup attempt is leading to more artifacts being shipped from Turkey to the U.S.

Read more here

Still independent.

We hope this story was worth your time. For over 14 years, Atlanta Black Star has stayed Black-owned and independently run. We didn't get here by waiting on ad budgets that were never built to prioritize us. Our readers did that.

Corporate support for Black media has always been thin. Outlets like ours get roughly 1% of the $170 billion spent on U.S. advertising each year, and that margin is shrinking further as advertisers walk back the DEI-linked commitments they made in 2020. That's the backdrop. It's not why we're asking.

The wider picture isn't any steadier. Newspaper ad revenue has fallen more than 80% since 2005, and local newsrooms are closing at a rate of roughly two a week nationwide. When outlets go under, it's rarely the ones built to center a Black perspective from the ground up that get to stick around.

We know a request for support isn't why you came here. But without readers choosing to fund this work directly, the depth of reporting we can do at home and abroad shrinks along with everyone else's. If you're not in a position to give, that doesn't change how much we value you as a reader.

If you are able to, a recurring contribution does more for us than a single one-time gift, because it lets us plan the next investigation instead of just the next invoice. It takes about 30 seconds, no long form, no account. Thank you for continuing to support independent journalism and freedom of the press.

Give once Give monthly Support another way

Related Stories

Back to top