The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has returned two ancient masterpieces long claimed by Greece on grounds of illegal provenance, the Greek culture ministry said on Friday.

The items, a gold funerary wreath and a marble woman's torso, arrived on Thursday evening on an Olympic Airlines flight from New York in "excellent condition", a ministry official told AFP.

"The antiquities will be stored at the Archaeological Museum in Athens, and will be officially presented by Minister George Voulgarakis on March 29," she said.

Greece had demanded for over a decade the return of the two works, in addition to two other items yielded by the Getty last summer, arguing that they were illegally removed from the country.

The museum decided to restore the wreath and torso after seeing evidence on their provenance from the Greek culture ministry, museum director Michael Brand said in December.

Four months previously, the Getty had also signed over ownership to a fourth-century BC engraved funeral stele, and a late fifth-century BC engraved sculpture.

The ancient gold wreath returned on Thursday is part of Greece's case against a former Getty museum curator, Marion True, who is also under investigation over 29 undeclared antiquities found last year in a Greek island villa she owns.

In addition to True, who is also on trial in Italy and denies involvement with antiquity smugglers, Greek authorities are also investigating Christophe Leon, a Swiss-based art dealer.

True and Leon are suspected of having received the Hellenistic-era wreath, which police say was illegally excavated in the northern Greek region of Macedonia in July 1993, and subsequently selling it to the Getty Museum for 1.15 million dollars (860,000 euros).

The Getty insists it never knowingly bought illegally acquired artefacts.

The Greek authorities have recently stepped up efforts to clamp down on the illegal trafficking of antiquities that has plagued the country's rich archaeology heritage for decades.