Egypt has welcomed home a 3,400-year-old statue depicting the head of King Ramesses II after it was stolen and smuggled out of the country more than three decades ago, the country’s antiquities ministry declared on Sunday.
The statue is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo but not on display. The artefact will undergo restoration, the ministry said in a statement.
The statue was looted from the Ramesses II temple in the ancient city of Abydos in Southern Egypt more than three decades ago. The exact date is not known, but Shaaban Abdel Gawad, who heads Egypt’s antiquities repatriation department, stated the piece is estimated to have been stolen in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
Egyptian authorities spotted the artefact when it was offered for sale in an exhibition in London in 2013. It moved to several other countries before reaching Switzerland, according to the antiquities ministry.
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