Dozens of bronze-age swords and arrowheads were seized by customs officers at Philadelphia International Airport last year. A routine inspection of cargo in October 2025 turned up the ancient artifacts. which officials say were smuggled out of Iran.
Heavily pitted and oxidized after thousands of years, the items were headed to Jacksonville, Florida, on a flight from the United Arab Emirates. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol turned them over to an archeologist at a Philadephia university, reports ABC News, to confirm their suspicions. The process of identification took months; they were dated to between 1600 BCE and 1000 BCE, and likely looted from ancient burial sites near the Caspian Sea.
Robert Wittman, a former FBI art crime investigator from Delaware County who helped establish the bureau's art crimes team, said the discovery underscores the scale of the global black market for stolen antiquities. He said federal agencies have specialized teams dedicated to investigating the illegal trade of cultural artifacts.
Wittman estimates a dollar value of "at least six figures." No charges are being pursued, according to CBP, and they have not determined what to do with the artifacts. As quoted by NBC 10 in Philadelphia:
"Even if purchased from a business in the country of origin or in another country, the purchase does not necessarily confer ownership for lawful importation into the United States," a CBP spokesperson wrote. "Importation of such items is permitted only when an export permit issued by the country of origin is presented with the article. Purveyors of such items have been known to offer phony export certificates."
The trade for middle-eastern artifacts is brisk, with supply driven by war, instability and corruption. Last September, the U.S. government seized 14 ancient Egyptian artifacts smuggled into the country.
The smuggled artifacts include amulets, stone figurines, a vase, and an "Old Kingdom Limestone Funerary Statue." The Funerary Statue alone is appraised at approximately $6 million U.S. Dollars. It likely originated from an archaeological site in Saqqara or Giza, which are royal cemeteries near the ancient city of Memphis, located in present-day Egypt. CBP officers discovered and seized these ancient artifacts at several international airports in the U.S., where they were in transit from overseas shippers destined for private collectors.
The artifacts were mislabeled with descriptions like "home décor" or "stone garden statue" in an effort to avoid detection.
In that case, a private collector in Edgewater, Maryland, was identified, but sometimes the offenders are large organizations. The retail chain Hobby Lobby infamously tried to smuggle thousands of ancient Iraqi cuneiform tablets, clay bullae, and other archaeological objects in the the U.S., falsely labeled as "tile samples," and after a yearslong legal battle were made to turn over the loot.
The artifacts were intended for the Museum of the Bible, funded by the Evangelical Christian Green family, which owns the Hobby Lobby chain. Internal staff had warned superiors that the items had dubious provenance and were potentially looted from Iraq.
The name of the civil forefeiture lawsuit is also the name of my new punk band: United States of America v. Approximately Four Hundred Fifty Ancient Cuneiform Tablets
Following the 1970 UNESCO Convention, there has undoubtedly been an increased effort within signatory nations to screen and monitor the export and import of cultural property worldwide. The United States of America vs. Approximately Four Hundred and Fifty (450) Ancient Cuneiform Tablets; and Approximately Three Thousand (3,000) Ancient Clay Bullae offers an example of how international and national requirements for exportation documentation can be used to prevent the illicit trafficking of cultural property. Further, this case also highlights the importance of civil forfeiture as a means of recovering illicitly trafficked cultural material. Given the many difficulties associated with proving criminal intent in antiquities trafficking cases, civil forfeiture may be an important tool to aid law enforcement agents in recovering illicit antiquities that have been trafficked out of source countries.
