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| Egypt to get back stolen statue from Belgium |
CAIRO: Egypt will retrieve the upper part of an ancient statue from Belgium that was stolen during the 2011 Revolution.
The statue, dating back to the 26th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, was broken into two halves when robbers destroyed its display cabinet and took the upper part, Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim said.
The relic, made of green Egyptian faience, was smuggled to Belgium and sold to a Belgian national, who in turn gave it to a French archaeologist to determine its authenticity, the minister said. Coincidentally, the French archaeologist had examined the same statue before in 1989 at the Egyptian Museum and immediately reported it to the Antiquities Ministry, he added.
Measures were taken by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry and embassy in Brussels, and Interpol and UNESCO were immediately addressed on the issue. The statue holder decided to return it for free to the Egyptian embassy for its homecoming, he said.
The statue was not listed among the museum’s missing artifacts, the minister regretted, saying that those in charge at the museum will be referred to the prosecution for questioning.
The 29-cm statue was originally unearthed in Giza in 1858, said ministry official Ali Ahmed.
The Egyptian Museum in Downtown Cairo took the hardest hit during the revolution when many priceless pieces were stolen on January 28, 2011, a day famously known as the “Friday of Wrath”.
