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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 March 1999 Issue No. 421 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 March 1999 Issue No. 421
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Restoring the past
By Nevine El-ArefAfter the smashing of a British-Egyptian smuggling network, more than 40 priceless Ancient Egyptian objects, most of them stolen from storerooms in Saqqara, 10 kilometres south of Giza, were brought back to Egypt on Saturday.
Gaballa Ali Gaballa, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said that the first batch of objects, packed in three huge boxes, included 27 papyri written in demotic and dating back to 300 BC, 12 Coptic textiles, a Sixth Dynasty limestone relief of a seated woman called Se-chess-hat, a terracotta statue of an unknown person, Graeco-Roman mummy masks, a magnificent bronze statue of the god Horus, an unidentifiable royal head in granite, stone portraits and coloured reliefs from Ancient Egyptian tombs.
The batch also contained objects taken from the tomb of Hetep-Ka at Saqqara, including two false doors, three heads of a nobleman wearing a wig, and a limestone relief showing a butcher at work.
"It was very difficult to identify some of the objects due to the fact that they had been disguised by layers of clay to make them appear as fakes or copies of antiques," said Gaballa. He added that all the treasures would be taken to the Egyptian Museum where they would be restored and put on display.
The second batch of retrieved items is expected early next week and will include six papyri, one written in Latin and the other five in Greek.
The recovery of these items is the final chapter of a saga that has gone on for several years and involved Scotland Yard in collaboration with the Egyptian tourist and antiquities police in one of the biggest ever investigations into antiques-smuggling.
The story began in the early 1990's when Jonathan Tokely-Parry, a British antiquities restorer who was fascinated by Ancient Egypt, decided to steal, smuggle and sell genuine Pharaonic objects. Tokely-Parry justified the theft by claiming that Egyptians did not deserve to keep the priceless items. "Preserving them in private collections, in air-conditioned houses and in the protection of wealthy people is the best protection of all," he once said.
The smuggler got the items past border checkpoints quite easily, because they were disguised by layers of plaster painted by hand in a manner which suggested that they were either fakes or copies of antiques produced by the Documentation Centre and sold throughout the country as replicas.
In 1994, Andrew May, Tokely-Parry's assistant, attempted to sell 24 papyrus texts to an antiques trader who asked for authentication. May took the papyri to the British Museum, where the curator immediately recognised them as part of a collection discovered in 1966 in the animal necropolis of North Saqqara by a British mission. The Museum immediately contacted Scotland Yard, the Egyptian Embassy in London, the SCA and the Egyptian tourist and antiquities police. Investigations were carried out and led police to Tokely-Parry, who was arrested in Britain in 1997 and sentenced to six years in prison for masterminding the operation. In Egypt, he was also sentenced in absentia to 15 years' imprisonment with hard labour.
Nine Egyptians were also jailed in Egypt for their part in the theft.
Gaballa said that the case is not over yet and that legal action is under way to try to recover other items which have not been handed over by their purchasers. One is the head of the Queen Meret, whose current owner is awaiting a court decision before handing it over. "This is a success story for Egypt," said Gaballa. He added that following a celebration in the Egyptian Embassy in London held to mark the recovery of the objects, an archaeologist in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford contacted him and led him to six other papyri, whose purchaser wanted to hand back to Egypt through the museum.
Egypt and Britain are currently discussing an agreement to control and exchange stolen items -- a significant development because Britain is not a signatory of the 1972 international agreement on antiquities. Similar discussions are in progress between Egypt and the United States.
Gaballa pointed out that the smuggling of antiques is not carried out by tourists or by foreign missions working in Egypt but by an international "mafia". He also claimed that the head of a smuggling cartel is living in a "big country" and that efforts were under way to have him arrested.
