Three pieces of antiquity that belong to ancient Egypt’s Late Period (664 – 332 BC) have been handed back to Egypt by The Netherlands. The pieces include a ceramic ushabti statuette that belonged to a deceased named Abetahmes; part of a wooden coffin adorned with a coloured painting of the goddess Isis; and an unknown mummy head still featuring its teeth and hair, that goes back to somewhere between the years 170 and 45 BC.
The Ministry of Antiquities says the pieces had been smuggled out of Egypt. Investigations confirmed they had been discovered through illegal excavations. The ushabti and part of coffin were found in an antique shop in the Netherlands, and were confiscated by the Dutch police once the Dutch apparatus for inspecting cultural heritage discovered there were no documents to prove they had been taken out of Egypt in a legal way. The mummy head was handed to the police by a Dutch citizen who had inherited it from his family. The Egyptian Embassy and the Dutch police showed great appreciation of his conscientious effort to hand it over to the police.
On 27 August, the Egyptian embassy in the Hague received the three ancient pieces, a result of joint efforts of the Dutch authorities and the Egyptian ministries of foreign affairs and antiquities. The handover was attended by Egyptian Ambassador Hatem Abdel-Kader, and representatives of the Dutch ministries of foreign affairs and culture; also officials from the apparatus for inspecting cultural heritage the Dutch police.
“The recovery of these artefacts is a milestone in Egyptian-Dutch cooperation against the illegal trade of cultural property and antiquities,” said Mohamed Ismail Khaled, Secretary-General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).
During the last three decades, Egypt’s government has exerted huge efforts to repatriate Egyptian cultural heritage that had been illegally taken out of the country. Some 30,000 artefacts from various countries have been repatriated since 2014.
Watani International
2 September 2024
