A rare bronze couch dating back to 530 B.C., which had been removed from a grave near the western province of Manisa during illegal excavations and smuggled abroad, has been returned to Türkiye by the J. Paul Getty Museum in the U.S. This brings the number of artifacts returned to the country this year to 36.
Discussions regarding the artifact’s return began after research conducted by Türkiye’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, along with the Getty Museum, confirmed that its provenance record had been falsified by a former owner.
Previous records for the artifact, which stands on four legs, stated that it had passed through various European collections between the 1920s and early 1980s, before being sold to the museum by a Swiss dealer.
Researchers discovered that the piece had been illegally excavated in the early 1980s from a funerary site in the Manisa region. According to the museum, remnants of linen still attached to the bronze couch were found to match similar fabrics, wood, and bronze materials preserved within the tomb site, which had been uncovered by Turkish archaeologists.
Timothy Potts, director of the Getty Museum, said that the return of the piece marks the culmination of a long-running collaboration between American and Turkish scholars to investigate the artifact’s origins and legal ownership.
The bronze “couch,” also referred to as a burial monument, is the latest artifact repatriated by the museum to Türkiye, following the return of a bronze sculpture of a male head in April.
