‘Herakles’ united

The Museum of Fine Arts ended a more than two-decade-old dispute with Turkey Thursday by returning the top half of its “Weary Herakles’’ statue to Turkish officials. The 1,800-year-old Roman sculpture has been at the MFA since 1982. But after years of negotiations, the MFA acknowledged in July that the statue, which experts believe was probably looted from an excavation in Turkey, should be sent back to that country.

Turkish officials met with MFA leaders for less than an hour on Thursday to sign an agreement transferring ownership of the sculpture to the Turkish government. The agreement stated that the MFA acquired the work in good faith and without knowing about any of the questionable circumstances surrounding its path from Turkey to Boston.

The MFA’s top half of “Weary Herakles’’ will be reunited with its bottom half in a museum in Antalya, Turkey. MFA officials had pressed to have the sculpture of the muscular hero reassembled in Boston and shown whole at the MFA first, but they were rebuffed by Turkish officials.

In July, the MFA first publicly confirmed the ongoing negotiations and acknowledged that the piece should be reunited with its lower half and returned to Turkey.

Yesterday’s news of the return of “Weary Herakles’’ was hailed by former Turkish cultural official Engin Ozgen, who began efforts to get the statue returned in the early 1990s....