One of the largest wooden pharaonic sarcophagi ever discovered, illegally taken out of Egypt and exhibited until recently in a US museum, was returned to Cairo on Monday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri announced.
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“There are two kinds of sarcophagi: those of the royal remains and those of the remains of nobles, this one belonged to a noble,” said Mostafa Waziri, director of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
MM. Choukri and Waziri were speaking at a press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs broadcast on television.
The 2.94 meters long and 90 centimeters wide sarcophagus, with its face painted green, dates from the Late Pharaonic period nearly 2,700 years ago and was discovered in central Egypt.
AFP
In a decade, Cairo has managed to recover more than 29,000 pieces of antiquity stolen and then resold outside Egypt.
In addition to these returns, Egypt has also announced several major discoveries in recent months, mainly in the necropolis of Saqqara, south of Cairo.
It has unveiled over 300 sarcophagi and 150 bronze statues in 2021 and 2022, many dating back over 3,000 years.
AFP
Egypt is counting on these new discoveries to revive tourism, hit hard by the Covid-19. This sector, which employs two million people and generates more than 10% of GDP, has been at half mast since the Arab Spring in 2011.
The Egyptian authorities have been promising for months the imminent opening of its “Grand Egyptian Museum”, near the Giza plateau, without having so far a date for its inauguration.
AFP
Many predicted this in 2022, for the bicentenary of the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone by the Frenchman Jean-François Champollion and the centenary of the discovery of the tomb of the child-pharaoh Tutankhamun.
