A collection of 5,000 artefacts that had been illegally smuggled out Egypt have safely arrived back to the country.

The artefacts were in the possession of the Museum of the Bible in Washington.

Supervisor General of the Repatriation Department Shaaban Abdel-Gawad said that diplomatic negotiations to recover the artefacts started in 2016 between Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the concerned authorities in the US, including Homeland Security and the State Department.

The collection includes coffins, mummies, funerary masks, heads of stone statues, and papyri with hieroglyphic, Coptic and Arabic text.

Abdel-Gawad said that the recovered objects, which had been stolen in illegal excavations, will be sent to the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo.

US Ambassador to Egypt Jonathan R. Cohen has expressed his happiness that these treasures have returned to their homeland.