Five rare ancient silver coins returned to Greece

The Ministry of Culture and Sports on Monday announced that five rare silver coins dating to the 5th and 4th centuries BC were returned to Greece, before being auctioned off in Munich and Zurich.

Three of them were repatriated on September 30 from Munich: a stater from Lindos (Rhodes) of the first half of the 5th century BC, an octadrachm of Getas, the king of Edonians in Thrace, dated to around 480-460 BC and a stater from Elis dated to around 328 BC.

The coins were handed over to the Consulate General of Greece in Munich by Bavarian police, and are now in the care of the Numismatics Museum of Athens, which helped identify them.

Another two silver coins were returned from Zurich to Athens on September 27. They were an Athenian tetradrachm (of the so-called new style), dated to 136 BC, and a tetradrachm of Ptolemy IV Philopator cut in Sidon around the end of the 3rd century BC.

Both coins which are now at the Archaeological Museum of Patras, were confiscated when a criminal ring was dismantled by Patras police in October 2016. The criminals were based in Greece but had an extensive network abroad, where they transferred looted antiquities.

"A total of 126 ancient objects and 2,024 coins were confiscated in Greece, while in March 2017 Germany returned 33 Mycenaean vessels, 600 ancient coins and other antiquities of various periods, which were illegally exported by the looters," the Ministry of Culture and Sports added in the statement.