On Tuesday, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles returned a bronze funerary bed dated to 530 BCE to officials of the Turkish government during a repatriation ceremony.
Discussions about the artifact’s potential return began after research conducted by Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, overseen by its Deputy Minister Gökhan Yazgı, and the Getty confirmed that its provenance record had been falsified by a former owner. In a statement, Yazgı praised the museum’s cooperation in “rectifying past actions” that led to the artifact’s trafficking abroad.
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The museum’s previous records for the artifact, standing on four legs and measuring 73 inches in length, stated that it had passed through various European collections between the 1920s and early 1980s, when it was sold to the museum by a Swiss dealer.
Researchers found that the piece was illegally excavated in the early 1980s from a funerary site in the region of modern-day Manisa, a province located northeast of the Turkish city of Izmir. According to the museum, remnants of linen still attached to the bronze bed were found by researchers to match similar fabrics, wood, and bronze materials preserved within the tomb site, which was uncovered by Turkish archaeologists.
Timothy Potts, the director of the Getty Museum, said the return of the piece marks the end of a long-running effort between American and Turkish scholars to investigate the artifact’s origins and legal title. Potts did not disclose the date of the original claim from Turkish officials to have the artifact returned.
The bronze “couch,” also referred to as a burial monument, is the latest artifact returned by the museum to Turkey, following the repatriation of a bronze sculpture of a male head in April.
Potts suggested that the latest negotiation signals progress in addressing restitution claims with the country, whose government has been active in seeking the return of objects with ties to Turkey’s cultural sites. “We seek to continue building a constructive relationship with the Turkish Ministry of Culture,” Potts said.
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