For the Rescuer of an Ancient Shipwreck, Trouble Arrived in the Mail

In “With Captain Sailors Three,” a documentary Mrs. Katzev wrote and directed about the excavation, she described the excitement of her work. “In each of us there is an expectancy, wondering that day what may turn up on the bottom and it’s a terrific thrill to be the first person to handle, or just see a glimpse of a piece of pottery,” she said.

The hull was also rescued, and after years of restoration was exhibited at a museum in Cyprus. Its timbers served as the blueprint for a replica vessel, Kyrenia II, that helped to illustrate what ancient seafaring had looked like. In 1986, during centennial celebrations for the Statue of Liberty, the replica sailed in New York’s parade of ships and Mr. Katzev was on board.

Sturt Manning, a Cornell University professor whose research team recently clarified the date when the original Kyrenia sunk, said it was hard to overstate the significance of the work that Susan and Michael Katzev took part in.

“This was the first time we started to get rich information about an amazingly preserved ship,” he said. “It is like a mini-Pompeii.”

Untruths in Packaging

Mrs. Katzev first came to the attention of U.S. Homeland Security Investigations in July 2022 when a package addressed to her arrived at a FedEx facility at Indianapolis International Airport. Customs and border officials, trained to scan for illicit cultural artifacts, reviewed the package, which had been shipped to Mrs. Katzev by a dealer in Britain.

The paperwork said it held an “Antique Stone Vase” valued at $150. But inside was a small, dark-colored bowl decorated with eagles and dragons and it was more “ancient” than “antique.” Experts thought it to be 4,000 years old and likely made in an area of the Middle East where ancient graveyards were plundered, beginning in 2000.

It was also not worth $150, as represented on the paperwork. The dealer’s own online catalog had listed the bowl with a price of $4,500.

“The overall conclusion from the experts,” Special Agent David C. Fife of Homeland Security Investigations later wrote in court papers, “was that the piece most likely originated from modern-day Iran and had likely been looted.”

The package was seized.

Two months later, investigators intercepted a second package addressed to her at a mail sorting facility in Maine, not far from Mrs. Katzev’s home. Like the first, it had come from Artemission, an online gallery based in London that is a member of the Association of International Antiquities Dealers. The gallery, which also operates as Atticart Ltd, specializes in “authentic ancient art from Egypt, the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia and Islamic Art,” according to its website.

The packaging described the contents as an “Antique Amulet over 250 years old,” with a declared value of $150. Inside, however, was a carved stone ram seal thought to be 5,000 years old. An invoice inside listed the value at $792, according to court papers.

A third package was seized weeks later. Again the packaging described an object younger and less valuable than what was inside: a bronze ibex figurine, which experts dated to the first millennium B.C. and that an invoice inside said was valued at $2,464.

According to court papers, experts said that all three artifacts were from Iran or Iraq, two nations that Americans are restricted from importing antiquities from under either national patrimony law or U.S. law. (Iraq suffered rampant looting during a period of political turmoil after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.)

Mr. Fife, of Homeland Security, said in court papers that Artemission was vague in discussing the artifacts it sold. He said a gallery representative, asked about the origins of one item, told him it had been acquired “in the 1980s and 1990s,” when provenance paperwork for such items was “not required.”

In some cases, the investigator reported, the business had told Mrs. Katzev that pieces she bought had previously been the property of a “prince” or other unnamed British “aristocrats,” a premise he described as seemingly implausible.

Artemission did not return calls for comment for this article. In total, investigators seized five packages destined for Mrs. Katzev, according to court papers. Then they began showing up at her home with search warrants.