Turkiye cannot recover a 6,000-year-old marble idol from Christie's and hedge fund billionaire Michael Steinhardt after waiting an unreasonably long time to claim it had been looted, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Wednesday.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said Turkiye "had reason to know" by the 1990s that the "Guennol Stargazer" might have been wrongfully removed from its territory.
It said Turkiye therefore "slept on its rights" by waiting to sue Christie and Steinhardt, the idol's owner, until April 2017, when the auction house listed the Stargazer for sale.
"Turkiye sat on its hands despite signals from its own Ministry of Culture that the Stargazer was in New York City," Circuit Judge Rosemary Pooler wrote for a three-judge panel. "Turkiye's failure to bring its claim (or even investigate it) until 2017 was unreasonable."
Lawyers for Turkiye, Christie's and Steinhardt did not immediately respond to requests for comment
The Stargazer is about nine inches (22.9 cm) tall, and named because its head tilts slightly upward toward the sky.
In claiming ownership, Turkiye cited the 1906 Ottoman Decree, which asserts broad rights of antiquities.
But the country said it would be impossible to investigate everything in its "vast trove of unknown ancient artifacts," and it was "neither aware, nor should it have been aware" of its claim to the Stargazer until Christie's described its limited provenance in its auction catalog.
Pooler, however, said the Stargazer had long been on public display, including more than three decades at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and that throughout the 1990s the culture ministry published essays and presentations about it.
"The Stargazer has not lived in secrecy," Pooler wrote.
Steinhardt and his wife paid US$1.5 million for the Stargazer in 1993. Christie's auctioned it for US$14.5 million, but the buyer walked away.
Wednesday's decision upheld a September 2021 ruling by U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan, which followed an eight-day trial. Nathan was later elevated to the appeals court.
The case is Republic of Turkiye v Christie's Inc et al, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals No. 21-2485.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York, Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
The Guennol Stargazer is shown in images from Christie's.
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