The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has returned two ancient masterpieces long claimed by Greece on grounds of illegal provenance, the Greek culture ministry said on Friday.

The items, a gold funerary wreath and a marble woman's torso, arrived on Thursday evening on an Olympic Airlines flight from New York in "excellent condition", a ministry official told AFP.

"The antiquities will be stored at the Archaeological Museum in Athens, and will be officially presented by Minister George Voulgarakis on March 29," she said.

Greece had demanded for over a decade the return of the two works, in addition to two other items yielded by the Getty last summer, arguing that they were illegally removed from the country...

Contested Getty antiquities arrive in Greece, AFP via Yahoo! News, USA, March 23, 2007.

Italian police said Thursday they have recovered about 300 ancient artefacts and thousands of fragments believed to have been illegally excavated in central Italy.

Six people were under investigation on possible charges that included trafficking of antiquities, but nobody has been arrested, Rome Carabinieri police said.

The items recovered include vases, jars and cups. Among the most precious objects was an 11-inch Greek vase dating to 600 B.C.-580 B.C. and featuring black figures. Some of the items were sold at the Porta Portese flea market, held every Sunday in Rome.

Col. Ferdinando Musella, an official with Italian anti-art theft police, said that tomb raiders often break vases and amphorae so they can sell single pieces and then ask for a higher price for the missing piece that would complete the artefact...

Italy recovers hundreds of artefacts, AP via The Boston Herald, Massachusetts, USA, March 22, 2007.

The Egyptian authorities have evicted hundreds of peasants from this village in southern Egypt because their mud brick houses, which have sat atop some of the world's most treasured and ancient tombs for centuries, were leaking sewage onto priceless antiquities.

The families have been resettled nearby in an Egyptian version of a suburban housing development, with running water and telephones. But 80 families are refusing to move, saying they want more from a government that has so far been reluctant to use brute force.

The standoff in Gurna, near the famed Valley of the Kings, illustrates the challenges facing an authoritarian government that has long imposed its will on the people, keeping them poor but fed, underemployed but employed...

Challenging tradition in the land of the pharaohs, Michael Slackman, International Herald Tribune, France, March 23, 2007.

cf. Different version of the same from the day before. Egypt evicts neighbours of the pharaohs, Michael Slackman, International Herald Tribune, France, March 22, 2007.

Egypt has succeeded in retrieving two food alabaster boxes in the shape of ducks which had been excavated by Dr. Dieter Arnold in 1979 from the pyramid complex of Amenemhat III at Dahshur then smuggled abroad.

These were reconstructed, then taken immediately to the magazines at Saqqara and stored there...

Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Zahi Hawass explained that such boxes returned back to Egypt with the help of Arnold who is now a senior curator at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Hawass continued that several years ago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York [spotted one at Christie's] and the other from Rupert Wace Ancient Art Limited in London.

Arnold was intrigued by these ducks, as he knew they must be royal, but the Metropolitan Museum was not satisfied with their provenances and decided against buying them.

However, he and his assistant, Adela Oppenheim, continued to study photographs of these ducks and realised that they were, in fact, the same ducks that Arnold has excavated in 1979...

Egypt restores two archaeological food alabaster boxes, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, March 26, 2007.