US sends trove of ancient artifacts stolen by ‘tomb raiders’ back to Italy

A treasure trove of ancient artifacts that were pilfered by tomb raiders and sold through shady auctions and art deals have been shipped back to Italy from the United States.

The 266 relics, which are worth millions of dollars, include items seized from a New York storage unit once owned by disgraced British antiquities dealer Robin Symes and artifacts returned by red-faced collectors who were duped into buying the ill-gotten goods.

About 65 of the items had been offered for sale to Houston’s Menil Collection but were turned down.

“The Menil Collection declined these works from the collector and they have never been part of the museum’s collection,” Tommy Napier, a spokesman for Menil, told the Associated Press in a statement.

The looted artifacts — many of them seized by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in the Big Apple earlier this year — include an Apulian krater, or vase, that dates back to 335 BC.

The pilfered vase landed in Symes’ hands, who then “laundered the piece through Sotheby’s London,” the Manhattan DA’s office said in a statement.

Also in the collection shipped to Italy are two Etruscan tile paintings from 440 BC that were looted from Cerveteri in northwest Rome, which has been a frequent target of archeological crooks.

Those tiles were stolen in the 1980s and ended up in Symes’ possession, who sold them to noted New York collectors Shelby White and Leon Levy in 1992 for $1.6 million — with the collectors returning them to Symes several years later when they learned their illicit origins.

In another case last year, an unnamed collector sought to donate some of the ancient items to the Menil Collection only to learn that they were stolen and being sought by officials in Italy.

Italy has been trying to recover the stolen antiquities for decades.

With Post wires