In an interview with Anadolu, Unal told how an anonymous collector had delivered the intriguing artifact to the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden.
The journey of this artifact began when the Netherlands Institute in Istanbul shared information with the cultural heritage protection division of the Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry.
After expert examination, it was definitively established that the relic had indeed come from Türkiye.
With little known about the artifact's history, officials at the museum in Leiden, in a commendable display of cultural stewardship, decided voluntarily to return the piece to its homeland.
"We received the ancient stone fragment temporarily kept in the storage of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden with Pinar Bilgen Ermis," the culture and tourism counselor at the Turkish Embassy in Amsterdam, said Unal.
He added that the artifact is thought to be an architectural piece or a tombstone.
