FINALLY, a successful case of ancient items being returned home! A few weeks ago, 6 ancient artifacts were returned to Turkey from the United States! 🥳

Transcript

I finally have a repatriation story with a currently pleasant ending!

On October 22, 2022, six ancient artifacts that had been stolen from Turkey were returned from the United States!

It’s unclear when these items were actually stolen from Turkey, but the 6 items included:

• A human-sized bronze statue of Roman emperor Lucius Verrus from the 1st or 2nd century CE,
• sarcophagus fragments from the ancient city of Perge in Anatolia,
• Attis and Apollo figurines from the early Roman and Hellenic periods,
• a Kasura-type idol from the early Bronze period,
• and a terracotta slab from the Phrygian period.

While these items were returned as part of this joint effort, this initiative was actually started one lone woman. And this one lone woman was actually Turkey’s first female archaeologist, the late professor Jale Inan.

These ancient statues were found underwater…but they were actually supposed to be there?! 😱

Transcript

We’re talking about 2 dozen bronze statues that were found underwater in Tuscany.

These statues were found in the town called San Casciano di Bagni, which makes sense because these were found in the ruins of an ancient bathhouse.

Archaeologists have been excavating in this area since 2019. They’ve also found a bunch of other things, including coins and other smaller statues.

So, the statues that we’re talking about now, though, most of them depict ancient Greco-Roman gods and goddesses. It’s believed that these used to adorn a sanctuary before their ritual immersion in thermal waters.

So, these statues were supposed to be underwater!

I also can’t help but be curious what this water tastes or smells like….

This has been called the most expensive private art collection ever sold and for good reason 🤯

Transcript

In Episode 3, I discussed the Paul G. Allen collection that was going up for auction at Christie’s in November. The estimate was that everything that was sold would all fetch $1 billion cumulatively.

Well, the auction was split into two separate parts: November 9th and November 10th. On the 9th, it surpassed the $1 billion mark. The total total for the day was $1,506,386,000.

So, on the second and final day of the auction, the total from that day was $115,863,500.

For both parts of the auction, all sales totaled $1,622,249,500.

🎧 Listen to the full episode here.