The Ministry of Antiquities said on Wednesday 1st January that they have discovered that 96 artefacts, mostly small figurines and beads, have disappeared from the Aswan Museum's storehouse.
A committee looking into the objects' disappearance checked the storehouse's inventory and found that the lock on the inner door had been broken. Officials in Aswan said the [...] evidence pointed to an insider theft. They spoke anonymously as they weren't authorized to brief the press [...] There have also been a number of break-ins at antiquity storehouses around the country. In one of the largest thefts, in the city of Qantara on the Sinai peninsula, roughly 800 artifacts were damaged or stolen [back in 2011], with some subsequently recovered.Tacked on to that information, as a space-filler was another piece of information which I do not recall seeing earlier:
Not long after Mubarak left office on Feb, 11, 2011, a Jordanian man was caught trying to smuggle as many as 3,753 artifacts including pharaonic statues, Roman coins, and medieval jewelry out of the country, according to earlier statements by Interior Ministry officials.Al Jazeera Egypt Live blog, ' Egypt says dozens for artifacts missing from museum' Jan 1st 2014.
In fact the robbery was noted on 17th December
A link to an article in Al Ahram is currently broken (I'll give it in case it comes back - bet it does not).17 grudnia 2013 przez: telefon komórkowy:News on the robbery of Elephantine store room...
UPDATE - Moved to here, Nevine El-Aref , '92 ancient Egyptian amulets missing from Aswan storage site', Al-Ahram Wednesday 1 Jan 2014 ("Antiquities ministry has alerted police at port sites because of risk of smuggling", so have they notified them they are on the lookout for 96 objects or 92?
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