A headless bronze statue believed to represent Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius will be returned to Turkey from the Cleveland Museum of Art, where it has been on display since 1986, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Monday.
The statue, looted from the ancient city of Bubon in southwestern Turkey in the 1960s, was trafficked through a network of antiquities dealers before ending up in the Cleveland museum’s collection, according to Deputy Culture Minister Gökhan Yazgı.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit seized the statue in 2023 after an investigation determined it had been illegally exported. Although the museum initially contested the seizure, it agreed to return the statue earlier this year.
According to a statement from the museum, new scientific testing had shown the second-century C.E. statue was “likely present” at the Sebasteion, a Roman imperial shrine near Bubon.
Yazgı celebrated the statue’s scheduled return in a post on X on Monday, calling it a “unique bronze sculpture that depicts Marcus Aurelius in his identity as a philosopher.”
“After nearly 65 years of scientific, legal and diplomatic efforts, the statue is finally returning to the Anatolian lands to which it belongs,” Yazgı said.
Before being transported to Turkey in July, the statue will be on display in a special exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art for three months. It will then be housed in a museum in Turkey, where officials say it will be displayed in its original cultural context.
“This long journey of Marcus Aurelius,” Yazgı said, “is ending where it began.”
According to the Smithsonian magazine, the Cleveland museum claims to have made a “relatively recent determination” that the statue is an unnamed philosopher rather than Marcus Aurelius. One stone base at the Sebasteion is inscribed with the ruler’s name, but the tests revealed that the statue was likely positioned on a different stone base without an inscription.
“Without a head or identifying inscription, the identity of the statue remains uncertain,” according to the museum.