(CAIRO) — Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced this week it had successfully recovered a rare trove of smuggled artifacts from the United States, concluding a three-year diplomatic effort between the countries.
Gilded coffin lids from the Pharaonic era, gold funerary masks and what’s believed to be fragments of Queen Hatshepsut’s ancient temple were among the 25 items accepted in Cairo on Monday.
The items spanned centuries and included a range of styles from different eras of ancient Egyptian civilization, the ministry said.
A portrait of a mummy from Faiyum, Egypt, a gold coin from the reign of Ptolemy I — a Greek general and successor of Alexander the Great — and jewelry pieces that date back 2,400 years were also among the items returned, according to the ministry.
The pieces were recovered in New York City in coordination between Egypt’s consulate, the New York District Attorney’s Office and American security agencies, the Egyptian antiquities ministry said in a press release.
Officials did not specify how the artifacts were smuggled from Egypt or how they surfaced in America, but said the recovery was part of a continued effort to “combat illegal trade in cultural properties.”
Similarly, in 2016 the U.S. returned a collection of stolen artifacts to Egypt, including an ancient wooden sarcophagus, a mummy shroud and mummified hand.
“While we recognize that cultural property, art, and antiquities are assigned a dollar value in the marketplace, the cultural and symbolic worth of these Egyptian treasures far surpasses any monetary value to the people of Egypt,” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah R. Saldaña in a statement at the time.
That same year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement had returned more than 200 artifacts to India, as well as a stolen copy of Christopher Columbus’ 1493 letter describing his discoveries in the Americas to Italy.
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