Met Museum to return 19 antiquities to Egpyt

2 August 2011

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A Figurine of a dog made of bronze with a gold collar attributed to Tutankhamun's tomb, which was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings.

(REUTERS/Metropolitan Museum of Art/Handout)

Nineteen artifacts excavated from the tomb of boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun will be returned to Egypt next week after residing for more than 50 years at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, according to Egypt's antiquities authority.

The artifacts represent just a small sampling of the Met's collection of Egyptian art which comprises an estimated 24,000 objects, dating from 3,000 B.C.E. to 400 C.E.

The agreement to return the pieces, which include a miniature bronze dog and a sphinx-shaped bracelet ornament, was forged last year with then-antiquities chief Zahi Hawass, who has since been fired after ex-President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in uprisings last February. Hawass planned to showcase the pieces at the new Grand Egyptian Museum, scheduled to open in 2012 near the Giza pyramids.

"Research conducted by the Museum's Department of Egyptian Art has produced detailed evidence leading us to conclude without doubt that 19 objects, which entered the Met's collection over the period of the 1920s to 1940s, originated in Tutankhamun's tomb. Because of precise legislation relating to that excavation, these objects were never meant to have left Egypt, and therefore should rightfully belong to the government of Egypt," Director Thomas Campbell said in a statement on the Metropolitan Museum website last year.

Read more at AP

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