Emperor Septimius waiting for his missing head

ANTALYA

Within the scope of the works carried out by the Culture and Tourism Ministry’s General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums on the return of historical artifacts smuggled from Türkiye in the past, efforts are underway to return the head of the life-size bronze statue of Roman Emperor Septimius Severus from Denmark. The body of the statue has been returned from the U.S.

Nearly 23,000 of the historical artifacts smuggled abroad from Türkiye have been returned to the country so far since 1980. Among them are priceless artifacts such as the Weary Heracles and Elmalı Coins, known as the treasure of the century.

Most recently, 12 historical artifacts were returned from New York, thanks to the cooperation with the embassy and Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and they were put on display at the Antalya Museum.

In the inauguration of the exhibition, Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said that the work continues to restore the missing head of the rare life-size bronze statue of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, is among these 12 works, which are from different regions of Türkiye, such as Antalya, Burdur, Konya, Şanlıurfa, Çanakkale, Manisa and Eastern Anatolia.

A special section has been created in the museum for 12 artifacts, also including a life-size rare bronze statue of the Roman Emperor Lucius Verus, two bronze bull chariots, a Roman-era military diploma, and Urartian-era terracotta vase, a statue head from the ancient city of Perge, a Kilia marble idol and a Neolithic Pilgrims Mother Goddess figure.

The missing head of the bronze statue has been on display for many years at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, where Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker” is also located. After the head part is returned, the Septimius Severus statue, exhibited in the Antalya Museum, will be combined.

Septimius Severus is a very rare and important work that was on loan at the Metropolitan Museum for a while. It was unearthed during illegal excavations carried out in the 1960s in the ancient city of Boubon, located in the village of İbecik in the Gölhisar district of the southern province of Burdur, and was smuggled abroad.

The statue, attributed to the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, who ruled between 193 and 211, is one of the rare human-sized bronze statues that have survived to the present day.