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GreekReporter.comEurope"Weary Hercules" Torso Reunites with Bottom Half in Antalya Museum

“Weary Hercules” Torso Reunites with Bottom Half in Antalya Museum

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) has agreed after two decades of negotiations to return the top half of an ancient Hercules statue to Turkey.

On Thursday the 23rd, MFA Director Malcolm Rogers met with director general for Cultural Heritage and Museums for Turkey Murat Suslu at the MFA, in order to sign the necessary ownership transfer documents of the sculpture.

The Turkish government had claimed the top of the “Weary Hercules” in 1991, when a scholar observed that the separated piece looked like the bottom half of a Herakles statue that was unearthed in Turkey 10 years earlier.

The marble copy of the famous, bronze “Hercules Farnese” sculpture, cast by Greek master Lysippos of Sikyon dated around 330-320 B.C., had been stolen from an archaeological site in the Mediterranean town of Perge and smuggled into the U.S. in 1981.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan returne tdhe top of the statue on his private jet to Turkey on Sunday the 25th of September after the Boston Art Museum agreed to return it as a “goodwill gesture.”

According to PM Erdogan, Turkey has successfully retrieved more than 4,000 smuggled artifacts since 2002.

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