But last week a local delivery company left a package at the Ministry of Culture in Guatemala City.
According to the ministry, the large parcel contained the ancient stone box and an unsigned note.
In it, a self-described private buyer said he or she purchased the artifact in "good faith" and only later learned that the artifact may have been stolen.
The ongoing federal investigation, which has already identified ten suspects, may test the veracity of that claim.
Moon Rabbit
About the size of a large toaster, the box dates to around A.D. 480 to 550.
Elaborate hieroglyphs and personages adorn the four sides of the box and its lid, which were carved from volcanic stone by at least three artisans.
In an email, Guatemalan hieroglyph expert Federico Fahsen said the lid depicts the Maya maize god and moon rabbit from the Early Classic Period.
He believes the box may have stored an ancient Maya codex, or book.
Local landowner Javier Leonidas discovered the vessel in a streamside cave last year along with 27 Maya clay pots.
Leonidas left the objects in the cave until they could be registered by experts.
Investigators believe looters slipped past the cave's locked gate one night last August to steal the 1,500-year-old stone box and ten clay pots, which remain missing.
Missing Links?
Perched near a 26-foot (8-meter) waterfall and a large pool, the cave doubled as a shrine and sat near the border of the Maya highlands and lowlands.
The site was situated near a major trade route used by Maya merchants to transport goods such as jade, obsidian, and quetzal feathers between highland and lowland Maya city-states.
(See National Geographic magazine's "The Dawn of Maya Gods and Kings.")
Woodfill believes the vessel and the cave are "missing links" that can fill in gaps in our knowledge of ancient Maya history.
"It's a unique artifact," he said. "There are very few stone boxes from the Maya world, and none that I've seen are this elaborate."
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