Looted ancient sarcophagus returned to Egypt from U.S.

An historic wood sarcophagus that was featured on the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences was returned to Egypt after U.S. authorities decided it was looted years in the past, Egyptian officers mentioned Monday.

The repatriation is a part of Egyptian authorities efforts to cease the trafficking of its stolen antiquities. In 2021, authorities in Cairo succeeded in getting 5,300 stolen artifacts returned to Egypt from internationally.

Mostafa Waziri, the highest official on the Supreme Council of Antiquities, mentioned the sarcophagus dates again to the Late Dynastic Period of historic Egypt, an period that spanned the final of the Pharaonic rulers from 664 B.C. till Alexander the Great’s marketing campaign in 332 B.C.

The sarcophagus, nearly 3 meters (9.5 ft) tall with a brightly painted high floor, could have belonged to an historic priest named Ankhenmaat, although a number of the inscription on it has been erased, Waziri mentioned.

It was symbolically handed over at a ceremony Monday in Cairo by Daniel Rubinstein, the U.S. chargé d’affaires in Egypt.

The handover got here greater than three months after the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office decided the sarcophagus was looted from Abu Sir Necropolis, north of Cairo. It was smuggled by way of Germany into the United States in 2008, in keeping with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg.

“This stunning coffin was trafficked by a well-organized network that has looted countless antiquities from the region,” Bragg mentioned on the time. “We are pleased that this object will be returned to Egypt, where it rightfully belongs.”

Bragg mentioned the identical community had smuggled a gilded coffin out of Egypt that was featured at New York’s Metropolitan Museum. Met purchased the piece from a Paris artwork vendor in 2017 for about $4 million. It was returned to Egypt in 2019.