CAIRO: A British auction house has withdrawn a Pharaonic artifact from sale after Egyptian authorities saw the item in a catalogue and said it was missing, the ministry of culture said on Wednesday.
Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said in a statement that he had asked for the 2,500-year-old carved limestone relief removed from a wall in the 26th Dynasty tomb of Mutirdis in Asasif in Luxor to be withdrawn from Bonhams London sale, set to take place on Thursday, because it was stolen.
Hosni said the ministry had no idea the piece was missing until they saw it in the catalogue.
According to a press statement by the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Secretary General Zahi Hawass, the tomb was discovered in 1969 by the German Egyptologist Jan Assmann, who restored it between 1973 and 1974. A photograph of the inscription was published in 1977 in Assmann’s “Das Grab der Mutirdis . The hieroglyphic inscription is written in six columns and includes a cartouche of Queen Nocratice (7th century BC) as well as different titles and the names of the tomb owner. A spokesman for Bonhams told AFP by telephone that the lot had been withdrawn following the ministry s complaint.
Lot 99 has been withdrawn, Julian Rup told AFP.
Apparently the buyer bought it in good faith. We work hand in hand with the police and they are satisfied that the buyer bought it in good faith.
Negotiations will begin and it will either stay with the current owner or be repatriated but we are not selling it.
Bonhams described the piece as a carved limestone relief fragment, about 12 inches in diameter, formed of six vertical columns and dating from the 26th Dynasty (around 665-525 BC).
It was to be sold with an estimate of $6,000 to $8,000.
The catalogue described the item as the property of an Australian private collector who began collecting in the 1940s whilst working in the merchant navy and passed it on to his son.
They also announced that in collaboration with Egypt’s ambassador to Holland, a 19th Dynasty green ushabti figure of a woman called Hener was also taken out of an auction sale and will be returned to Egypt.
The figure had been stolen from a Saqqara storehouse and is now at the Leiden Museum awaiting its journey back in accordance with an Amsterdam court verdict.
