The golden coffin of priest Nedjemankh was unveiled on Tuesday in Cairo after its return from New York.
The gold coffin was stolen in Egypt in 2011 when the country was in political and social turmoil, the year that long-time autocrat, Hosni Mubarak was toppled in a popular revolt.
The BBC reports that “the grand and ornate coffin had been buried in Egypt’s Minya region for 2,000 years before it was stolen”.
The 1.8 metres (six foot) fine gilded sarcophagus coffin was smuggled out of the country first to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and then to Germany, were some restoration was undertaken on the casket before it was shipped to France.
According to the Daily Mail , the New York Metropolitan Museum “purchased the coffin from a Paris art dealer in July 2017 for about $4 million”.
The museum believed that the art dealer, Christophe Kunicki, was acting in good faith and had a legal right to sell the coffin. However, the Daily Mail reports that the historic item was “sold with bogus documentation, including a forged 1971 Egyptian export license”.
Dating back to the Ptolemaic period (1st-2nd century BC), the coffin was designed for Nedjemankh, a high priest of the ram-headed god Heryshef.
The shimmering artefact adorned with gesso reliefs had been housed since 2017 in New York’s Metropolitan Museum, which purchased it from the Paris art dealer.
“I am very happy to have this piece back again in Egypt… We will know all the details about the theft later,” Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, told reporters at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation unveiling.
Egypt has sought to promote its archaeological heritage in a bid to revive its vital tourism sector, which took a battering from political turmoil after the revolution.
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