Minister of Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim on Sunday said that the ministry will receive on Monday five artifacts repatriated from France and handed over to the Foreign Ministry.
The pieces were stolen from Egypt during the state of lawlessness that had prevailed in the wake of the 25 January revolution.
“We have been monitoring sites that sell cultural property of countries of civilizations to see if they came out of Egypt in legitimate ways or were stolen and smuggled,” the minister said.
Two of the pieces were displayed in an auction in Toulouse and the other three in a bazaar. They date back to the Ptolemaic era in the third century BC.
A ministerial committee is taking the pieces to the Egyptian Museum for restoration.
Ali Ahmed, director of the Repatriation Department, said the first piece is of a head carved in glass, the second features part of a chest and the third features a full arm. They were discovered by the French mission in East Kantara in 2010.
The ministry has recently repatriated several artifacts from the United Kingdom and Germany, in addition to more than 90 artifacts that were displayed in an auction hall in Jerusalem.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
