"Sleeping Beauty" Sarcophagus Lid

"Sleeping Beauty" Sarcophagus Lid

On August 8, 1981, Italian antiquities dealer Gianfranco Becchina acquired this Roman sarcophagus lid known as the "Sleeping Beauty" in two pieces from Carlo Ciochetti for 7.5 million lire. Ciochetti allegedly acted as a frontman for dealer Antonio “Nino” Savoca, who had obtained it from looters.

Becchina exported the object from Italy to Switzerland on August 14 through his shipping agent Rodolphe Haller. On September 15, Becchina sold a share of the object for Fr. 80,000 to the Swiss collector and dealer George Ortiz. It is believed that the object was owned jointly by Ortiz and Becchina for several years.

The lid was offered for sale to the J. Paul Getty Museum the following year, but the museum declined to acquire it. It was then shown at the Historical Museum of Bern from November 1982 to February 1983, and was also published in a German catalog. At an unknown time, the sculpture underwent restoration, whereby the two pieces were joined.

In the late 1980s or early 1990s, Japanese dealer Noriyoshi Horiuchi acquired the lid and, in 2001, imported it to the United States.

The whereabouts of the object remained unknown until it appeared in May 2013, linked to the Phoenix Ancient Art gallery, operated by the Aboutaam brothers, who were showing it at the Park Avenue Armory.

On October 29, 2013, the lid was moved to a storage unit in Long Island, New York, where on February 20, 2014, United States Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents photographed it. This evidence was passed to the Italian Carabinieri Division for the Protection of Cultural Heritage (TPC), who initiated the repatriation process.

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Funerary Object – coffins, mummy portraits, grave goods

Roman

Italy

Kaitlin Janson

Vanessa Rousseau

VG