The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities last week announced it has received from the UK four antique artefacts that had been stolen and smuggled out of Egypt. They have been placed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the ministry said.
Shaaban Abdel-Gawad, a ministry official, said one of the artefacts was on sale at an auction house in London. This was a fragment of wall inscription that had been stolen from Queen Hatshepsut’s magnificent al-Deir al-Bahari funerary temple in Luxor in 2013. Queen Hatshepsut ruled Egypt as a pharaoh in 1478 – 1458BC.
Another piece, a wooden ushabti statuette that had been stolen in 2013 from an antiquity storehouse in Philae Island in Aswan, was on display at a London antiquity shop. Ushabtis were figurines of servants to serve the deceased in the afterlife.
The two other pieces are glass busts, one stolen from an antiquity storehouse in Al-Qantara Sharq on the east bank of the Suez Canal, and set up for sale on the Internet. The other went missing, together with a number of other missing artefacts, from the Italian archaeological expedition in Egypt, and was up for auction at Bonham’s in London.
During and in the wake of the 2011, Egypt witnessed a security breakdown during which the rate of antiquity theft rose by 90 per cent compared to its pre-2011 rate, according to statements previously made by Egyptian officials.