Egypt has successfully recovered 21 ancient artefacts that were illicitly smuggled to Australia, including a funerary figurine and an amulet depicting the Eye of Horus, the country’s antiquities ministry announced on Sunday.
According to Mohamed Ismail Khaled, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, most of the recovered items had been on public display at a well-known Australian auction house before it was discovered that they lacked valid documentation proving legal ownership.
Among the retrieved collection were a fragment of a wooden sarcophagus and various smaller antiquities, which have now been handed over to the Egyptian embassy in Canberra. Officials did not disclose details about when or how the items were taken out of Egypt.
The theft and smuggling of Egyptian artefacts has been a longstanding problem, particularly during periods of political unrest. Following the 2011 revolution that led to the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, numerous museums and archaeological sites were looted, resulting in the disappearance of thousands of invaluable pieces.
Egypt has made significant efforts to reclaim its stolen heritage, with authorities stating that around 30,000 artefacts have been recovered over the past decade.
The antiquities ministry also highlighted a previous success involving the return of the final piece of the “Sheshn Nerfertem” stela, a fourth-century BC inscribed stone tablet that went missing from an excavation site in Luxor in 1995. The artefact had been smuggled to Switzerland in pieces, with the final segment arriving at the Egyptian embassy in Australia six years ago.
The now-complete stela, along with the latest recovered items, have been transferred to the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, where they will undergo restoration ahead of a temporary public exhibition.
