Danish family seek to return Etruscan objects bought from boot of car in Italy

Their father bought the antiquities, a haul of dirt-encrusted Etruscan objects handed to him from the boot of a car, while on holiday in Italy in the 1960s. For decades they remained in the loft of the family home in Denmark, exasperating his wife and perplexing his children.

Now, inspired by a growing movement of people choosing to return antiquities apparently looted or illegally excavated from their countries of origin, his children are trying to give the items back to Italy.

“Of course they should absolutely go back. Buying looted grave goods is obviously wrong and returning them is the right thing to do,” said Mads Herman Søndergaard, the son of Bent Søndergaard, who bought the antiquities as souvenirs after visiting the Etruscan City of the Dead at Cerveteri, near Rome.

Hardly any money exchanged hands, his children recall, but their father, a teacher, felt uneasy afterwards, realising that the sellers’ claims to have had official permission to sell such objects were, in hindsight, suspicious.

The antiquities are thought to date from the sixth century BC and believed to have come from an Etruscan tomb. They are still encrusted with soil, suggesting an illicit excavation. The Søndergaards never displayed them at home.

Now, Mads Herman, a civil engineer, and his sister, Elin, a physicist, are waiting for instructions from Italy on how best to return them.

After seeing him quoted in Guardian reports on other repatriation cases, they sought advice from the archaeologist Dr Christos Tsirogiannis, a guest lecturer in the department of archaeology at the University of Cambridge and a leading specialist in researching international networks of trafficking antiquities.

In 2023, an Irish woman was inspired to return her late father’s collection of 19th-century African and Aboriginal objects to their countries of origin after reading in the Guardian about an American who had returned 30 antiquities to Italy .

He in turn had taken action after reading another report about a man who sent back 19 antiquities to their countries of origin amid growing coverage of looted ancient artefacts. Each of them had followed Tsirogiannis’s advice.

The Etruscan objects purchased by Søndergaard include an oinochoe, or wine jug, which Tsirogiannis described as “beautiful and intact”. Its value alone would be about £5,000.

Mads Herman said that they needed legal advice on how to return the objects: “It’s not just that you send them back in the post. You can’t do that.”

He recalled that his father, who died in April, had wanted to return the objects to Italy, but that he had suffered long-term ill-health. His wife, as a historian, also believed that the antiquities should be returned, not least because she “wanted to clean up the house” and it would involve specialist techniques to remove the encrusted soil. Exasperated, she would ask her husband: “Why on earth do we have these things?”

The vases were kept in a storage box, ensuring that they were preserved perfectly, Mads Herman said: “Although my father suddenly died before the items were returned, the items still ‘belong’ to his estate. So the heirs – my sister and I – are only carrying out his final wishes. Given the context, I think it should be clear why we are quite happy to return the items back to Italy.”

He is now waiting for instructions from the Italian embassy on how to return the antiquities: “They have sent a request to Rome to figure out how they should proceed.”