4,000-Year-Old Bronze Age Swords and Arrowheads Seized by CBP
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol seized almost 100 ancient artifacts, including 36 swords and 50 arrowheads, that date back over 4,000 years.
Border officials were surprised when the cache of items fit for a museum showed up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - 36 copper-alloy short swords and 50 arrowheads that appeared to be from the Bronze Age. The items were shipped from the United Arab Emirates in October and labelled as "metal decoration articles" en route to Jacksonville, Florida.
"Philadelphia is not a big transit route for illicit artifacts from the Middle East," said Robert Wittman, a former FBI agent who spent 20 years investigating similar cases.
Wittman said the items were likely purchased by a private collector on the black market.
"The time period is very interesting to the collectors because it's the Bronze Age, so we're talking minimally 4,000 years ago," Wittman said.
After identifying the artifacts as Iranian antiquities, officials determined that the pieces were likely looted from burial sites.
"A lot of these pieces do come out of burial sites because when people died they would put their weapons in with them, their artifacts, their most important pieces," Wittman said.
Wittman said that the collection was likely worth between $15,000 to $25,000 on the black market, but they're legally worthless since they were illicitly obtained.
The truth is there's no value because they're illegal," he said. "It's the fact that they're part of the cultural heritage of the regions where they're coming from. When you loot cultural heritage out of the ground and take it away, you destroy the history of those nations."
