Stolen more than 30 years ago, a statue of Pharaoh Ramses II will be returned to Egypt
It’s a return to the country for this statue of Ramses II. It has just been returned to Egypt more than 30 years after being stolen, according to Reuters information relayed by Le Figaro on Monday. According to a press release from the country’s Ministry of Antiquities, it is currently in the Cairo Museum where it will be restored. It is not on display at the moment.
3,400 years old, the statue “is part of a group of statues representing King Ramses II seated alongside a number of Egyptian deities,” explains the director of the Egyptian department of repatriation of antiquities. He said the artifact was stolen in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
The statue was allegedly stolen from the temple of Ramses II in Abydos, in southern Egypt, and then smuggled out of the territory. She was spotted in 2013 during an exhibition in London. According to the Ministry of Antiquities, she then traveled to several countries before arriving in Switzerland. Authorities worked with Egypt to accurately determine the origin of the artifact, which was handed over to the Egyptian embassy in Bern in 2023.
Also called Ramesses the Great, Ramsès II is one of the most powerful and well-known pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Last year, his wooden sarcophagus was part of a unique exhibition in Paris. The coffin had made the trip without the mummy of the famous pharaoh in order to respect Egyptian law.
Image : Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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