Another Egyptian Museum Piece Turns Up - Outside Egypt

Stock photo, Al Ahram

The torso of a 26th Dynasty green faience ushabti figure stolen during the January 25 Revolution is to return to Egypt next week from Brussels. 

[Egypt's] Antiquities minister Mohamed Ibrahim in a statement [...] said that a statue dating back over 2,500 years that was stolen from the Cairo museum during the 2011 revolt against Hosni Mubarak was found in Belgium. The statues that dates to the 26th dynasty, more than 500 years BC, and made from earthenware was stolen on January 28, 2011 when looting and violence erupted in Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the anti-Mubarak revolt. The piece was smuggled to Belgium where a French expert analysed it and contacted Egypt authorities. 

This same story is given by Al-Ahram (Nevine El-Aref ,'26th Dynasty ushabti figure coming home from Brussels', Saturday 7 Dec 2013). The 29cm object was found in the Memphis necropolis in 1858 and belonged to a nobleman of various titles, among them the holder of the north stamps.

Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim said that the artifact was broken into two pieces. The lower part remained in the museum while the torso was stolen and smuggled out of the country and sold to a Belgian citizen. A few days ago, continued Ibrahim, the Belgian citizen presented the torso to a French archaeologist to ascertain its authenticity and value. The French archaeologist recognised that the torso had been in collection the Egyptian Museum. He had studied it in 1989 at the museum. The French archaeologist reported the find to the Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA), which in turn undertook the required procedures to recover it. [...] "The torso was among the pieces stolen from the Egyptian Museum on 28 January 2011, but regretfully it was not included in the report issued at that time about the missing objects," Ibrahim told Ahram Online. Ibrahim added that he referred the case to the prosecutor general for investigation on why the torso was not included in the missing items report.  

Wow. How incompetent is that? Indeed, according to the list that was eventually produced by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, there were no "earthenware" statues reported as having gone missing on January 28th 2011. Some 26th dynasty shabtis were taken out of their cases and some (two?) broken, but none figure in the updated  missing objects list.  A terracotta object (model bed) was listed as missing but was later found safe in the museum stores. This is ridiculous, coming up to three years later and there is still no accurate list of what went missing. What's the excuse this time? 

My own suspicion (so far) has been that the missing objects from Cairo Museum have not left the country, and I have a theory why. Obviously if one of them is found outside the country, it looks like I was wrong, which is why I am interested in the route by which this object reached Belgium. Of course we are not told the identity of the collector who bought this no-questions-asked, the dealer who sold it to him or her and the name of the supplier. Nor are we informed that any arrests were made or that investigations are ongoing. My guess is that they are not, all softly-softly the "repatriation" is thought to be a big achievement in itself, making the people who handled this stolen piece pay a price is simply in nobody's interests. Except this time, it could lead to some of the other stolen items.

Sources:
Nevine El-Aref ,'26th Dynasty ushabti figure coming home from Brussels', Al-Ahram Saturday 7 Dec 2013.

AFP, 'Statue of pharaoh Tutankhamon's sister recovered', 8th December 2013.

 UPDATE 23.04.14

From: Stephen Kalin and Tom Perry, 'Serendipity aids Egypt in struggle to recover stolen heritage' Reuters Apr 23, 2014:

When French Egyptologist Olivier Perdu saw a fragment of a pharaonic statue on display in a Brussels gallery last year, he assumed it was a twin of an ancient masterpiece he had examined in Egypt a quarter of a century earlier. The reality was an even more remarkable coincidence: the fragment was part of the very same artefact - a unique 6th century B.C. statue hewn from pale green stone - that Perdu had received special permission to study in Cairo in 1989. The statue, a 29 cm-high (11 inches) representation of a man wearing a pharaonic headdress and holding a shrine to Osiris, the god of the afterlife, was smashed by looters who broke into the Cairo Museum during the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak. Its top portion had been missing since then. "I was just astonished," Perdu told Reuters. "Through examining all the stains and irregularities I could conclude that it was indeed the same piece. "What I had between my hands in Brussels was the object that I had studied in the Cairo museum in 1989." Thanks to his chance encounter, the piece excavated in 1858 has found its way back to Egypt. Horrified to learn he had purchased a stolen artefact, the buyer offered to surrender it right away, Perdu said. It is now back in Cairo, where conservation experts have reunited it with the rest of the statue.