The Museum of the Bible in Washington has been working to regain credibility by giving back looted objects in its collection. It has returned a Manuscript that is more than a thousand years old to the Greek Orthodox Church.

The manuscript’s history and ownership chain has been traced on the Museum of the Bible’s website, including confirmation that it was written in the late 10th or early 11th century through various sales after the end of the war, ARTnews reported.

The museum said that it transferred the artefact, which its founders acquired at a Christie’s auction in 2011, to an Eastern Orthodox Church official in a private ceremony in New York.

Jeffrey Kloha, the Museum of the Bible’s chief curatorial officer said, “Certainly the marketplace has its challenges, things have been moving in the market for some time, and in some cases decades, that have origins that are not legal.”

According to Newyork Times, the manuscript is to be repatriated next month to the Kosinitza Monastery in northern Greece, where it had been used in liturgical services for hundreds of years.

The return was in line with the Museum of the Bible’s policy in recent years of investigating the provenance of its entire collection after early acquisitions by its founders, the owners of the Hobby Lobby craft store chain were found to include thousands of items looted from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt.

The manuscript, some of its pages darkened by the smoke from candlelit prayers and others smudged over centuries by monks turning the pages, was among a library of over 400 manuscripts carted off by mules by Bulgarian forces who stormed the monastery in 1917.

“It’s definitely an object that was used,” Kloha said. “It would have been part of monastic life on a regular basis.”

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