Greece has returned to Turkey a collection of more than 1,000 stolen ancient coins.
A few months earlier, Ankara publicly supported Agina in its long-running quest to retrieve the Parthenon marble coins from the British Museum in London.
Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni stated that the collection of 1,055 silver coins was seized by Greek customs officers at the border with Turkey in 2019.
"These coins were imported illegally," Mendoni said at a ceremony at the Numismatic Museum in Athens, which specialises in currency and medal collections.
Greeks are "particularly sensitive" to repatriation issues, she stressed.
"All illegally exported antiquities, from any country, must be returned to their country of origin," Mendoni added.
Turkish Culture Minister Mehmet Nouri Ersoy explained that the operation was the first repatriation of such cultural heritage by Greece.
Greek and Turkish experts determined that the coins were part of a hoard hidden in Asia Minor between the late 5th and early 4th centuries BC.
Although research is ongoing, it is likely that the treasure was hidden in present-day Turkey during the Persian Wars expeditions of the Athenian general Kimon, a veteran of the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC.
Most of them are tetradrachms - ancient large silver coins originally minted in Athens and widely used in the Eastern Mediterranean, explained museum numismatologist Vassiliki Stefanaki, an expert on coinage.
Imprinted with the image of an owl, Athenian relics were also used locally to pay tribute to the Persian Empire, and Persian governors used them to reward their soldiers.
Other coins come from Cyprus, the islands of Aegina and Milos, from Asia Minor cities founded by Greek settlers, from the Iron Age kingdom of Lydia, and from Phoenicia in present-day Lebanon.
Mendoni thanked Turkey for supporting Greece's campaign to return the Parthenon marbles from London.
The British Museum has long maintained that the marbles were moved from the Acropolis to Athens by royal decree issued to Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. But in June, Zeynep Boz, head of the Turkish culture ministry's anti-smuggling commission, told a UNESCO meeting in Paris that no such document had been found in Ottoman archives.
Her statement is "decisive" in favour of Greece's position, Mendoni said. | BGNES, AFP
