CAIRO (AP) — Egyptians reacted with outrage this week after officers stated {that a} 3,000-year-old bracelet that had belonged to an historic pharaoh was stolen from Cairo’s famed Egyptian Museum after which melted down for gold.
Tourism and Antiquities Minister Sherif Fathy stated in televised feedback late Saturday that the bracelet was stolen on September 9 whereas officers on the museum had been making ready artifacts for an exhibit in Italy. He blamed “laxity” in implementing procedures on the facility and stated that prosecutors had been nonetheless investigating.
The bracelet, containing a lapis lazuli bead, belonged to Pharaoh Amenemope, who reigned about 3,000 years in the past. Authorities stated it was taken from a restoration lab on the museum after which funneled by a series of sellers earlier than being melted down. The minister stated the lab didn’t have safety cameras.
4 suspects have been arrested and questioned, together with a restoration specialist on the museum, Egypt’s Inside Ministry stated.
In response to the ministry, the restoration specialist who was arrested confessed to giving the bracelet to an acquaintance who owns a silver store in Cairo’s Sayyeda Zainab district. It was later bought to the proprietor of a gold workshop for the equal of about $3,800. It was ultimately bought for round $4,000 to a employee at one other gold workshop, who melted the bracelet all the way down to make different gold jewellery.
The suspects confessed to their crimes and the cash was seized, the ministry stated in an announcement on Thursday.
The ministry additionally launched safety digicam video exhibiting a store proprietor receiving a bracelet, weighing it, after which paying one of many suspects.
This undated picture supplied by Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities exhibits a 3,000-year-old bracelet that belonged to an historic pharaoh, which was stolen from Cairo’s famed Egyptian Museum after which melted down for gold. (Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities through AP)
The lack of a treasure that had survived for 3 millennia was painful to many individuals in Egypt, the place there may be nice esteem for the nation’s historic heritage.
Some questioned safety measures on the museum and known as for tightening these measures across the nation’s treasures.
Monica Hanna, a outstanding Egyptian archaeologist, known as for suspending abroad displays “till higher management” is applied to safe the artifacts. Hanna is the dean on the Arab Academy for Science, Expertise & Maritime Transport, and campaigns for the return of Egyptian artifacts exhibited in museums abroad.
Malek Adly, an Egyptian human rights lawyer, known as the theft “an alarm bell” for the federal government and stated higher safety is required for antiquities in exhibition halls and people in storage.
The Egyptian museum in Cairo is illuminated, November 11, 2024. (AP Picture/Amr Nabil)
Amenemope dominated Egypt from Tanis within the Nile Delta throughout Egypt’s twenty first Dynasty. The Tanis royal necropolis was found by the French archaeologist Pierre Montet in 1940, in line with the Egyptian Museum.
The necropolis’s assortment displays about 2,500 historic artifacts, together with golden funerary masks, silver coffins and golden jewels. The gathering was restored in 2021 in cooperation with the Louvre Museum in Paris.
The theft reminded a few of previous cultural losses, together with the temporary disappearance of Vincent van Gogh’s “Poppy Flowers” — then valued at $50 million — from one other Cairo museum in 2010. That portray was recovered inside hours.
