New York investigators have returned 36 antiquities to Syria, collectively valued at more than $5 million. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., announced the restitution on Wednesday.

The group includes a stone relief looted from the ancient site of Palmyra. The limestone sculpture depicts a reclining man attended by women and children and was created for a burial chamber in the late 2nd century CE. Weighing more than 1,000 pounds, it was likely hacked from the wall by looters, Manhattan investigators believe, with the figures left intact. The relief was then smuggled out of Syria and ultimately into Dubai, before Palmyra was destroyed by ISIS between 2015 and 2017.

Among the returned objects are 14 "extraordinary" mosaics stolen from a Roman-era villa in Syria. They are linked to antiquities dealer Georges Lotfi, a former source for the Manhattan district attorney's Antiquities Trafficking Unit. In a dramatic turn of events, Lotfi was charged in 2022 with criminal possession of stolen artifacts from Syria and Lebanon. He is currently wanted by New York authorities and Interpol.

Wednesday's restitution also included a monumental section of flooring dating to the 3rd century BCE. It depicts the wedding of the god Telete and Eros in the company of Aphrodite and the Three Graces. Investigators seized it in 2021 from a storage unit owned by Lotfi.

The same day, Bragg announced that his office seized 13 pieces from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The seizures bring the total number of antiquities taken from the museum since 2017 to more than 402. According to the district attorney's office, those objects are collectively valued at more than $98.7 million.

In July, the Met described the seizures as part of a collaborative effort by the museum and the D.A.'s office to purge its collection of looted items.

"The Met doesn't want any stolen art in our collection," Lucian Simmons, head of the Met's team of 12 provenance experts, said in a statement at the time. "[The D.A.'s office] has been an invaluable partner to us in this work—particularly their ability to unlock information that would otherwise be inaccessible."

The return of the Palmyra relief and the 14 Lotfi-linked mosaics signals that New York's trafficking investigations now reach dealers who once worked alongside prosecutors — and that Syria's cultural heritage, ravaged by war and ISIS, is being recovered piece by piece.