Read on Twitter
Egypt repatriates 5,000 manuscripts, pieces of papyrus from USA - http://www.egypttoday.com/Article/4/96934/Egypt-repatriates-5-000-manuscripts-pieces-of-papyrus-from-USA
But has justice been restored? 
Read Neil Brodie arguments in this open access article -- restorative justice needs a more complex and holistic approach: https://periodicos.ufpel.edu.br/ojs2/index.php/Memoria/article/view/19217
Read Neil Brodie arguments in this open access article -- restorative justice needs a more complex and holistic approach: https://periodicos.ufpel.edu.br/ojs2/index.php/Memoria/article/view/19217
Many of the papyri given back to Egypt come from a Turkish dealer called Yakup Eksioglu based in Istanbul and London. What do we know about him?
For instance that he sold papyri for ages on @eBay as Yasasgroup, Mixantik, and ebuyerrrr: https://hyperallergic.com/429653/the-illegal-papyrus-trade-and-what-scholars-can-do-to-stop-it/
Actually many Turkish accounts are still actively selling suspicious material and @AskeBay @eBay is doing NOTHING except suspending and re-allowing them to be online 
What is police enforcement doing? Will there be some actions, prosecutions against the dealers and parties involved? We don't really know. Sometimes restitution looks like a convenient way to sweep all under the rag and have some nice press 
. But...
. But...
Let us don't forget those who have died in the harvesting of antiquities for the illicit market, like many children digging in shafts in Egypt https://www.livescience.com/55687-children-dying-in-egypt-looting.html
Or guards killed while they were protecting sites from looters: https://hyperallergic.com/277551/looters-kill-two-guards-at-ancient-egyptian-necropolis/
We all focused on the @museumofBible, but a huge amount of middle-small collectors are still buying genuine papyri and forgeries too...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/233865489721
https://www.ebay.com/itm/233865489721
So don't be fooled by restitution headlines: without a radical change in education, legislation, law enforcement, the antiquities market and academic behaviours, the illegal trade in antiquities and the crime that goes with it is not going to end soon. Why?
Because there is big profit and the parties involved in the trade don't want to be under scrutiny. They keep it secret, and we wonder if this is always for the right reasons (privacy: ok, so do serious due diligence and give us decent catalogue entries on collection history!).
Remember that auction houses are allowed to sell via private sale treaties. For example @ChristiesInc handled in that way the sale of the only extant copy of a Sappho poem otherwise unknown (The Brothers poem) which has now DISAPPEARED. Yes, not a typo!
According to an article recently published by papyrologist Mike Sampson, the papyrus was on offer for 12,000,000 dollars. If that sale fell through, @Christies earned the commission, while the world has lost the poem forever...It is a dirty game, yes indeed it is...
More importantly the fragment is part of the same papyrus book-roll that contained other Sappho fragments that the Museum of the Bible is sending back to Egypt (they bought it from Mr Eksioglu).
So whoever is in possession of the 12,000,000$ fragment or dealt with it is in big troubles (perhaps managed as usual behind the scene...) https://facesandvoices.wordpress.com/2020/01/13/news-on-the-newest-sappho-fragments-back-to-christies-salerooms/
and here Mr Green and the @museumofBible press release. Which is VERY interesting. Don't you think? https://www.museumofthebible.org/newsroom/update-on-iraqi-and-egyptian-items
