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.
