Stolen by Builders, Smuggled by Smugglers, Coveted by Collectors

It didn't fall from a tree. Dug up somewhere
 here, when how and when? How
could it have entered market legally?

AFP, 'Egypt outraged over sale of Tutankhamun sculpture's sale at London auction' Daily Sabah, 1st July 2019.

The pharaoh's finely-chiseled head [...] comes from the private Resandro Collection of ancient art that Christie's last sold in 2016 for £3 million. But Egyptian authorities overseeing the north African country's unparalleled collection of antiquities want to see the auction halted and the treasure returned. [...] Former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass told AFP on Sunday that the piece appears to have been "stolen" in the 1970s from the Karnak Temple complex of Egypt's great monuments. "The owners have given false information," he said in a telephone interview. "They have not shown any legal papers to prove its ownership." The French-owned British auction house explained that the current lot was acquired by Resandro from a Munich-based dealer in 1985. It traces its prior origins to the 1973-74 acquisition by another dealer in Austria from the Princely House of Thurn and Taxis in modern-day Germany. The trail peters out shortly afterward and little is known to the public about how the statue found its way to Europe. "Ancient objects by their nature cannot be traced over millennia," Christie's said in a statement released to AFP. "It is hugely important to establish recent ownership and legal right to sell which we have clearly done," it added. "We would not offer for sale any object where there was concern over ownership or export." 

Hawass is right, these sellers have not demonstrated that they are able to show any legal papers to prove its licit ownership. The claimed ownership by 'the princely house of Thurn and Taxis' turns out to be unverifiable at best or a lie at worst. That 'other dealer' is also a claim that so far (three days before the sale) remains unconfirmed.

I think the object (since it is not a known excavation find), probably was dug up during private building works in the area around the Temple in the  building boom of the 1970s or - more likely - 1980s from the area outside the Temple Complex  and (since it is not now on Egyptian soil) smuggled out of Egypt in defiance of the prevailing antiquity laws. The head at 24 cm tall is too small to be part of the group of monumental statues erected on the central axis of the Temple in Tutankhamen's reign (or shortly after its end), and probably comes from a smaller late eighteenth dynasty shrine. The latter might have been removed to make way for (early?) Ramesside constructions and reused as building material in the extensive rebuilding of the Temple in this period (for example some as-yet-unknown structure on the line of the processional way between Luxor Temple and Karnak - on the line of the Avenue of Sphinxes - to the southwest of the complex and until recently covered in modern buildings).

This statue is not 'grounded' in the terminology of Elizabeth Marlowe, we know nothing of its context of deposition through it being clandestinely excavated and illegally handled at the time of discovery and entry into the antiquities market. Collectors and dealers that collaborate in hiding these processes from view are the real looters and the real knowledge thieves. This head is not any longer archaeological evidence, basis for creating knowledge, it is a mere trophy, illustrating history.

There is no need to put the word stolen in inverted commas.