The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has handed over to Greece ancient objects that until recently were held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has handed over to Greece ancient objects that until recently were held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Since 2017 the Manhattan prosecutor's office has had a special unit devoted to combating the illicit trade in antiquities, which seizes stolen objects from American museums and private collections.

The principal part of the consignment consists of five pieces of bronze armour that looters illegally dug up on Crete. The set comprises two helmets and three mitrai, bronze plates which warriors suspended from the belt to protect the lower abdomen. Researchers date the armour to the late 7th century BC.

Specialists studied archaeological publications, archival materials, official documents and correspondence, and established that the looters stole the armour from the site of Afrati in 1964. Afrati lies in central Crete, and archaeologists are investigating the remains of an ancient city there.

Greece will deposit the armour in the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion. The museum will unite it with the armour that the Greek Archaeological Service found at Afrati during rescue excavations in 1968 and 1969. Archaeologists use the term rescue excavations for urgent work carried out on a site threatened by construction, demolition or looters.

At the same ceremony Greece received five more objects. Among them were a Cycladic marble figurine, which an ancient craftsman made between 2700 and 2600 BC, a marble lid from a cosmetics box of the Early Bronze Age, a bronze bracelet of the Archaic period, a marble shell created around 400 BC, and a gold Hellenistic necklace with a pendant in the shape of an amphora