The antiquities were formally handed over to the Egyptian General Consulate in New York following joint efforts by Egyptian and American authorities.
The recovered items, spanning several eras of Egyptian history, were returned after US law enforcement investigations confirmed their illicit export from Egypt.
The operation resulted from close coordination between the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Egyptian Consulate in New York, and the American Attorney’s Office.
This recovery reflects the strength of the ongoing partnership between Egypt and the United States in combating the illegal trafficking of cultural property.
Mohamed Ismail Khaled, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, explained that the return followed a criminal probe by US authorities, which proved the pieces had left Egypt unlawfully. Egypt’s Consul General in New York received the artefacts.
According to Shaaban Abdel-Gawad, Director-General of Egypt’s Department for Antiquities Repatriation, the artefacts are of notable historical and artistic value.
Among the recovered pieces are a ceramic vessel depicting the ancient deity “Bes,” a funerary mask of a young man from the Roman era, and a colorful wall relief from the New Kingdom period inscribed with hieroglyphs and showing the upper part of a human figure.
The recovered objects also included a gravestone from the 3rd to 4th centuries CE, a 19th-century vessel adorned with Arabic inscriptions, and other artefacts representing different periods of Egyptian history.
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