Greece returns 1,055 silver coins to Turkey, eyes Parthenon Marbles next

Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said the hoard of 1,055 silver coins had been seized by Greek customs guards on the border with Turkey in 2019.

Greece on Thursday returned a hoard of 1,055 silver coins to Turkey, dating back to the 5th century BCE, in the first such repatriation between the two countries.

The coins, seized by Greek customs guards on the border with Turkey in 2019, were part of a stock hidden in Asia Minor, Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said at a ceremony in Athens.

"These coins had been illegally imported," she said at the Numismatic Museum, which specialises in currency and medal collections.

Greeks are "particularly sensitive" to repatriation issues, she said.

"All illegally exported antiquities from whichever country should return to their country of origin," she added.

Turkish Culture Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said the operation was the first repatriation from Greece.

Greek and Turkish experts determined that the coins were part of a stock hidden in Asia Minor between the late 5th and early 4th century BCE, she added.

While research is ongoing, it is possible the hoard was secreted in modern-day Turkey during the Persian Wars expeditions of Athenian general Cimon, a veteran of the 480 BCE Battle of Salamis, she added.

Most of the cache were tetradrachms -- ancient large silver coins -- originally minted in Athens and used broadly in the eastern Mediterranean, said Museum Numismatologist Vassiliki Stefanaki, a coinage expert.

Stamped with the image of an owl, the Athenian relics were also used locally to pay tribute to the Persian Empire, and Persian governors used them to reward their troops, she said.

Other coins came from Cyprus, the islands of Aegina and Milos, from Asia Minor cities founded by Greek settlers, the Iron Age kingdom of Lydia, and Phoenicia in modern-day Lebanon, officials said.

Mendoni on Thursday also thanked Turkey for supporting Greece's campaign to secure the return of the Parthenon Marbles from London.

The British Museum has long maintained that the Marbles were removed from the Acropolis in Athens by royal decree granted to Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

But in June, Zeynep Boz, the head of the Turkish Culture Ministry's anti-smuggling committee, told a UNESCO meeting in Paris that no such document had been found in Ottoman archives.

Her statement was "decisive" in favour of Greece's position, Mendoni said Thursday.

Ersoy through a translator said Turkey wanted "with all its heart" to see the Marbles return to Athens.

"The Greek people should have them, they belong to them," he said.

Boz, who attended Thursday's ceremony in Athens, told AFP that the timing of the coins' return by Greece was not related to her report in June.

The five-year delay was caused by the time required by the Greek justice system to authorise the coins' repatriation, she said.