MFA Boston Repatriates Ancient Necklace to Turkey

TheMuseum of Fine Arts Bostonhas returned to Turkey a necklace dating to 550–450 BCE that is believed to have been looted from a tomb there in 1976. Made of gold and dark-orange carnelians, the artifact was purchased by the museum in 1982 from a London dealer, who is thought to have strung it together. The seller, as was typical at that time, provided no provenance information, noting only that the necklace had come from Asia Minor, as ancient Anatolia (now modern-day Turkey) was then termed.

In 2015, a scholarly essay pointed out the resemblance between the necklace and some beads and metallic fragments excavated in 1976 from the Bintepeler Necropolis Area, in the western Turkish province of Manisa and placed on display in an archaeological museum there. Those objects had been removed from the site following reports of looting there, and the similarities between the antiquities suggested that the necklace had been illicitly removed from the same site earlier.

On learning of the resemblance, the MFA Boston began investigating, centering their explorations on the necklace’s short length—eight inches—which implied that it might be a portion of a larger object that had broken while being trafficked.

“[The size] should have raised suspicions,” the museum’s senior curator for Greek and Roman antiquities, Phoebe Segal, told theBoston Globe. “I think if we were approaching this now, we would say, ‘Why is this necklace so small?’”

The MFA Boston late in 2023 reached out to the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, which performed its own research on the matter. The beads were determined to match those on display in Manisa, and the two parties agreed on a legal transfer of the necklace.

“The Ministry of Culture and Tourism, together with its institutional and academic partners, is making great efforts to protect and restore Türkiye’s cultural heritage,” said Hilal Demirel, attaché for cultural affairs and promotion at Turkey’s ministry of culture and tourism. “The return of an object that was illegally removed from Türkiye is a symbolic moment that sends a strong message to the world, emphasizing the importance of international cooperation in the protection of cultural heritage. It was a most gratifying experience to work on the effective resolution of this matter with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.”