Ancient Greek column capital repatriated from Germany

[Culture Ministry/Intime News]

A German depository returned a fragment of an past file superior to Greece during a ceremonial connected October 10, the Ministry of Culture said Saturday.

The Ionic file superior is made of limestone with some plaster successful places. It it 24 cm successful tallness and 33.5 cm width and shows stylistic similarities with different known Ionic capitals from the ιστοσελίδα of Ancient Olympia, the celebrated sanctuary successful the Peloponnese peninsula where the past Olympic Games were held.

The ministry said that the repatriation of the superior was made imaginable thanks to “the sensitivity and courage” of a German woman, who had owned it since the 1960s, aft collecting it from the Leonidaion, a ιστοσελίδα astatine the southwest borderline of the sanctuary where a gathering used to stand, consisting of 4 Ionian colonnades with 138 decorated columns.

Motivated by the caller returns of important antiquities from the University of Münster to their countries of origin, the woman decided to manus it implicit to the university, with whose publication it was returned to Greece. “The University of Münster is proving to beryllium a stable spouse of the Ministry of Culture,” the Greek ministry said, listing two much past artifacts which were returned successful 2019 and 2024.

Dr Torben Schreiber, classical archaeologist and curator of the Archaeological Museum of the University of Münster who attended the ceremonial successful Ancient Olympia, noted the Museum’s steadfast will to instrumentality immoderate entity that proves to beryllium the merchandise of amerciable trafficking, adding that it is ne'er too precocious “to bash the right, the motivation and the conscionable thing.”