Back in the Spring of 2014, the art world found itself drawn to a particularly controversial object slated to come up for auction in Bonhams April's Antiquities sale in London. The piece was the lower two-thirds of a monumental black basalt stela which depicts an Assyrian king in a long-fringed cloak, holding his staff, surrounded by divine symbols.  Incised across his body were twenty lines of evenly-spaced cuneiform script, with more text spilling over the sculpture's left side. 

Listed as "a monumental Neo-Assyrian black basalt royal stele of Adad-nerari III of Assyria" the artefact was given an estimated sale price of between £600,000 to £800,000.

One inscription, carved with deliberate precision millennia ago, warned of divine retribution against anyone who uprooted the monument from its sacred setting. The irony was hard to miss: an ancient warning against plunder carried on a fragment plainly removed from its own archaeological context, its journey into the modern market underscoring that loss of context, while standing as evidence that plunder continues to drive today’s illicit antiquities trade, hidden by vague statements of ownership that try, and fail, to hide its true origins. 

What made this sale contentious was not its dramatic epigraphy, but the serious questions raised about where and to whom this Assyrian piece could be traced. The stele in question dates to the reign of Adad-nīrārī III, King of Assyria from 811 to 783 BCE, a ruler whose period marked both consolidation and transition within the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Ascending the throne as a child, he initially ruled under the regency of his mother, the formidable Queen Šammuramat, often identified with the later Semiramis of classical legend. 

Once in power, Adad-nīrārī III launched military campaigns across the Levant, extracting tribute from a wide arc of subject kingdoms and helping to reassert Assyria’s dominance after a period of instability.  His inscriptions frequently emphasise divine sanction, royal piety and the restoration of order, themes that appear on the complete stela from which this fragment was once part.  Objects bearing his name are valuable not only for their artistic and epigraphic qualities but also because they help us define and understand the extent of Assyria’s political reach under his rule. 

Consigned to Bonhams through an intermediary, the stela would ultimately be traced by law enforcement to the then-Geneva-based Lebanese antiquities dealer Halim Korban.  For those familiar with major art crime cases, his name may resonate for his involvement in the sale of the controversial Sevso Silver, the spectacular, but looted hoard of fourth-century Roman silver sold to the Marquess of Northampton and ultimately restituted to the Hungarian government in 2014.

Without any paperwork to substantiate how it left its country of origin and came into the possession of Korban, the Assyrian artefact was listed for auction with a simple but vague claim that the owner's father gifted him the ancient object "in the 1960s." 

"had great difficulty to move to the sea-coast what remained of the Assyrian sculpture, because it was too large to carry on horseback; and when we came to thin it, as I had taken some tools with me for the purpose, it was found too hard to cut."

Eventually Rassam returned to England with a hacked-down, and significantly mutilated version of the upper portion of Adad-nīrārī's famous stela which has been housed in the British Museum's collection (inventory number: BM 131124) since 1881. While the explorer wanted to return to Syria to seek out the lower portion,  Rassam was never granted permission to do so, and it is unclear how or when the lower portion was discovered and ultimately removed from the country without permission. 

What we do know with certainty is that the lower portion of the stela first came to public notice in June of 2000 when it was consigned to Christie’s in New York.  Offered as Lot 491, but mistakenly attributed to S ˇamsˇı¯-Adad V of Assyria, the memorial stela remained unsold and was shipped back to Geneva after the failed auction.

That warrant paints a picture, not of an unwitting buyer misled by the market attempting to perform due diligence on the object he purchased, but of an individual who, according to prosecutors, understood exactly what he was acquiring when he purchased the statue on 26 May 2007 from Royal-Athena Galleries for USD 1,330,000.  Even the object's invoice clearly states the object as “said to be from Bubon, Turkey. Late 2nd - early 3rd Century AD” leaving little ambiguity about the statue's claimed origin.

The warrant states plainly that Mendelsohn bought this “Nude Emperor” statue knowing it had been looted from Bubon, Türkiye in the 1960s, a site famously and illegally plundered, with several of its bronze figures dispersed through the international market for decades.  Prosecutors further allege that Mendelsohn exchanged correspondence with art historians, curators, and conservators in which the statue’s origins were plainly discussed. The DA’s conclusions rested not only on their own investigative research but also on email communications that investigators say illustrate, with unusual clarity, the collector’s awareness of the statue’s problematic origins both at the time of purchase and afterward.

While Mendelsohn had once been tentatively been labeled as an “innocent purchaser” early in the New York investigation inquiry, this assessment changed as investigators uncovered additional evidence, including email correspondence that demonstrated the collector's awareness of the bronze's find spot. By the time the warrant was issued, prosecutors stated they were “increasingly convinced he had not acted in good faith.”

Although Mendelsohn’s lawyer, Marcus A. Asner, claimed the emails described in the New York arrest warrant document were taken “out of context” and insisted his client neither knew nor believed the bronze came from Bubon, the documentation prepared by the District Attorney’s Office firmly contradicts that claim.  In addition to an invoice which cited the statue's find location as "possibly Bubon", investigators highlighted three instances in which the California philanthropist explicitly acknowledged that the torso had been excavated at Bubon in the 1960s, a date that clearly places the object's illicit export in violation of the Republic of Türkiye's cultural property laws.

To J. Michael Padgett, Mendelsohn wrote:

“It is a 2d century torso about 72 inches high that was exxavated at Boubon, Turkey in the 1960's.” 

It is worth mentioning that a year earlier, in 2006, Italian prosecutor Paolo Giorgio Ferri brought charges against the dealer, Princeton University Art Museum’s then-curator Michael Padgett and Mauro Morani a tomb raider and caposquadra who provided plundered material to Edoardo Almagià, an alleged trafficker who as of 1 November 2024 has an outstanding warrant requested by the same New York prosecutor's office. 

To Professor John Pollini, USC specialist on Roman bronzes, Mendelsohn wrote:

“I may be acquiring a monumental bronze torso exxavated from a sebasteon in Boubon, Turkey, in the 1960's.” 

And to Los Angeles conservator Jerry Podany, Mendelsohn he even named some of the hands the statue had passed through in its early circulation:

“The piece was acquired by the Lipson family in 1967 from George Vaccos [sic] in Basel and was part of the excavation in the 1960's from Bubon, Turkey. ” 

Despite the strength of the aforementioned allegations and the clarity of the prosecutors’ position, the case concluded this week not with a criminal trial, but with a negotiated settlement.  Under agreed terms, in late September 2025 Mendelsohn agreed to surrender the bronze statue, relinquish all ownership claims to said artefact, and pay for its shipment to Manhattan. In return, prosecutors agreed to withdraw the arrest warrant and suspend criminal prosecution for one year, provided Mendelsohn violates none of the agreement’s terms. This settlement also did not require the California collector to admit the statue was looted, nor did it require any admission of wrongdoing.

That outcome secured the return of this extraordinary Roman imperial masterpiece, which was one of several dozen artefacts handed over to representatives from  Turkey on this past Monday at a ceremony in Manhattan.  But despite the significance of this restitution victory, the case also highlights a recurring tension in cultural heritage enforcement: prosecutors must balance the urgent need to secure the recovery of looted antiquities with the reality of heavy caseloads, limited resources and the evidentiary complexities of cross-border art crime.

Prosecutors must also weigh the public value of restitution against the practical challenges of pursuing a full criminal trial, challenges that often include jurisdictional disputes, decades-old evidence, and highly lawyered defendants. In some cases, as here, achieving restitution quickly may require accepting settlements rather than adjudicating culpability.

But in this instance, it is important to acknowledge all of the chain of evidence, not just the end agreement.  The arrest document sets out detailed allegations of knowing possession, deliberate concealment and even the strategic suggestion of a possible donation of the antiquity despite its clearly problematic origin. Those committed to cultural property protection should not lose sight of this. 

When settlements are reached between prosecutors and defense counsel, the public news announcements that follow often focus only on the terms of the final agreement, not on the evidentiary record that compelled it.  This is why it is essential to read publicly filed evidentiary documents and warrants in full rather than solely relying solely on news coverage, which tends to diplomatically report the end result,  but not always the underlying facts. 

Restitution in this case has been achieved, and all parties involved in the equation got something they wanted.  But the allegations remain a stark reminder of how looted antiquities can circulate through elite hands, sometimes shielded by the very legal mechanisms that facilitate their return, and of the difficult, often imperfect decisions prosecutors must make to ensure that stolen objects ultimately go home.