Today we shed light on an artifact, the sarcophagus of Najm Ankh, the piece recovered from the Metropolitan Museum, where we continuously review a piece with its image and some information about that piece and the place of its display, as well as the era to which it belongs.
The Coffin The sarcophagus is 6 feet (2 meters) tall and skillfully made of wood and metal. It is covered with gold plates, elaborately decorated with scenes and hieroglyphic texts intended to guide the priest on his journey to eternal life. It dates back to the Ptolemaic period, and is now on display in the National Museum of Civilization Egyptian.
The coffin has a success story belonging to the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, which was able to retrieve it from America after it was illegally smuggled, as the coffin was stolen in 2011.
The beginning of the story dates back to the theft of the golden sarcophagus of Ankh from Egypt in 2011 when the country was in turmoil, after the events of January 25, so that the Metropolitan Museum in New York bought the coffin from an art dealer in Paris in July 2017 for about 4 million dollars, from a dealer Antiquities who had an exit permit for the piece issued by Egypt and dating back to 1971 AD.
Khaled El-Anany, Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, said at the time that this was done through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in cooperation with the Recovered Antiquities Department and the American Antiquities Unit, where the latter requested to verify the authenticity of the coffin’s export document after it was displayed in the Metropolitan Museum.
The Minister of Antiquities confirmed that after the Egyptian Antiquities Committee reviewed the document, it was confirmed that it was not true, and that the documents were forged, as they contained an eagle seal at a time when this seal was not approved, and that the number it carried was for another piece, and it bears the name of the Authority. Egyptian Antiquities, while it was called at that time the Egyptian Antiquities Authority.
After the investigations carried out by the Office of the Prosecutor of the City of Manhattan in New York, which lasted for more than 20 months, during which the General Administration of Recovered Antiquities of the Ministry of Antiquities presented, in coordination with the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, all the evidence and evidence that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the alleged permit for the exodus of the piece in 1971 It was counterfeit and the Arab Republic of Egypt never issued a permit for this piece (the law before 1983 allowed the issuance of permits for some pieces to go outside Egypt).
Based on the documents sent by the Ministry of Antiquities, the Investigation Bureau concluded that Egypt had the right to recover this archaeological sarcophagus, and that the export permit for it was forged, and the Metropolitan Museum was subjected to a forgery process when buying it. In this context, the Director General of the Metropolitan Museum yesterday sent a letter to the Ministry of Antiquities confirming In which the museum apologized to the ministry, the government and the Egyptian people for the incident, and that the museum had already taken all measures to return the piece to its mother country, Egypt.
Tue, Jun. 21, 2022
