Can I bring cedar, fossils, or antiques home?

Cedar boxes, bowls, and furniture: legal to export, but Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica) is CITES-listed and the customs officer can ask for the seller's invoice. Reputable workshops in Essaouira (thuya wood, not technically cedar) and the Cedar Forest cooperatives near Azrou give you a stamped receipt. Keep it in your hand luggage.

Fossils — trilobites, ammonites, orthoceras slabs from the Erfoud region — are a major Moroccan industry. Fifty thousand Moroccans earn a living in the fossil trade, worth around forty million dollars a year. Common species (Calymene trilobites, ammonites under 15 cm) leave Morocco freely. Rare or scientifically important specimens require an export permit from the Ministry of Energy and Mines; serious dealers in Erfoud arrange it. The faked-up resin trilobites in Marrakech souks are fine to take home and have no scientific value.

Antiques are where it gets serious. Anything genuinely over 100 years old — old doors, manuscripts, religious objects, Berber jewellery older than the protectorate — falls under the 1980 Heritage Law and cannot be exported without a permit from the Ministry of Culture. Customs at Marrakech and Casablanca airports do x-ray bags and have confiscated brass bowls that turned out to be eighteenth-century. The carpet you buy is not an antique no matter what the seller claims; that's a different conversation.