The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities has restored three parts of different mummies: a head, a left and a right hand, after being handed over to the Egyptian consulate in New York.
Shaaban Abdul Jawad, director of the Central Department of Antiques, said that the Ministry of Antiquities succeeded, with its diplomatic and legal efforts, and in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Egyptian Consulate General in New York, to restore the three parts.
The US authorities confiscated the pieces with an American citizen in Manhattan while trying to sell them.
Abdul Jawad said the investigations proved that the mummies’ parts had been stolen and smuggled from Egypt in violation of the local antiquities laws in the country.
He noted that these pieces had been purchased by an American citizen from one of the Egyptian workers while he was in Egypt in 1927, after this latter stole them from an archaeological site in the Valley of Kings in the city of Luxor (southern Egypt).
