Culture minister says Hattusa Sphinx will be handed over to Turkey today

ISTANBUL (A.A) - July 26, 2011 - Turkey's culture and tourism minister said on Tuesday that Hattusa Sphinx would be handed over to Turkey later in the day.
Ertugrul Gunay said that the Hattusa Sphinx would arrive in Anatolian soil the same day.
"You can see the Hattusa Sphinx tomorrow," Gunay told reporters in Istanbul.
Gunay also said Turkey was getting back the smuggled historical artifacts and bringing them back to homeland although foreign countries insisted on not giving them back.
A sphinx pair from Hattusa was taken for restoration out of Turkey to Germany in 1917. One sphinx was returned while the other stayed in Germany. It was on display in Berlin's Pergamon Museum.     
Some 3,500 years ago, the magnificent city of Hattusa, capital of the Hittite Empire, was one of the Bronze Age's largest settlements. Based in the heart of Anatolia, and then swallowed up by the earth for millennia, it was rediscovered in the 19th century.     
German archaeologists began to unearth the site in 1906.