Looted historic sarcophagus returned to Egypt from USA

An historic picket sarcophagus that was on show on the Houston Museum of Pure Sciences has been returned to Egypt after US authorities found it had been looted years in the past, Egyptian officers stated Monday.

The repatriation is a part of the Egyptian authorities’s efforts to cease the commerce in its stolen antiquities. Cairo authorities recovered 5,300 stolen artifacts in 2021 returned to Egypt from totally different elements of the world.

Mostafa Waziri, a senior official on the Supreme Council of Antiquities, stated the sarcophagus dates to Historic Egypt’s Late Dynastic Interval, an period that included the final rulers of the pharaohs, B.C. From 664 to the invasion of Alexander the Nice, BC.

The practically 3-meter (9.5-foot) tall sarcophagus with a brightly painted higher floor in all probability belonged to an historic priest named Ankhenmaat, though a few of the inscriptions on it have been erased, Waziri stated.

It was symbolically handed over by US Chargé d’affaires to Egypt Daniel Rubinstein at a ceremony in Cairo on Monday.

The handover got here greater than three months after the Manhattan district lawyer’s workplace revealed that the sarcophagus had been looted from the Abu Sir Necropolis, north of Cairo. In response to Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin L. Bragg, it was smuggled into america by way of Germany in 2008.

“This gorgeous coffin was trafficked by a well-organized community that looted numerous antiquities from the area,” Bragg stated on the time. “We’re completely happy that this object can be returned to Egypt, the place it rightfully belongs.”

Bragg says the identical community smuggled out of Egypt a gilded casket that went on show on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in New York. The Met purchased the piece from a Parisian artwork supplier in 2017 for about $4 million. It was returned to Egypt in 2019.