An ancient wooden sarcophagus that was looted from Egypt fifteen years ago has been returned to the Egyptian government. The coffin had been formerly displayed at the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences. After years of being away from its home country, the US authorities had confirmed the loot and it was handed back to the Egyptian authorities on January 2, 2023, in Cairo by Daniel Rubinstein, the US chargé d’affaires in Egypt, in a symbolic ceremony.
“This stunning coffin was trafficked by a well-organized network that has looted countless antiquities from the region. It was smuggled through Germany into the US in 2008,” Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney had said after his office had confirmed that the sarcophagus had been looted from Abu Sir Necropolis, North of Cairo.
Mostafa Waziri, a top official at Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, believes that the sarcophagus dates back to the Late Dynastic Period of ancient Egypt, an era that spanned the last of the Pharaonic rulers from 664BC until Alexander the Great’s campaign in 332BC. The sarcophagus, almost 3 metres (9.5 ft) tall with a brightly painted top surface, may have belonged to an ancient priest named Ankhenmaat, though some of the inscriptions on it have been erased.
This is not the first artefact that has been confirmed looted and returned to Africa. In 2022, the German government signed over ownership of 1,100 bronzes back to the Nigerian government.
The return of the wooden sarcophagus is part of the Egyptian government’s continued efforts to stop the trafficking and secure the return of stolen antiquities. In 2019, a gilded coffin that had been smuggled out of Egypt and formerly featured at New York’s Metropolitan Museum was returned to Egypt. The Met had gotten the piece from a Paris art dealer in 2017 for about $4m (£3.35). In 2021, Egyptian authorities saw the return of 5,300 looted artefacts from across the globe.
At the handing-over ceremony on Monday, Mostafa Waziri used a magnifying glass to inspect the ancient Egyptian wooden sarcophagus. Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry announced the recovery of the artefact, known as the “Green Sarcophagus”, during a televised press conference.
