2 - 8 August 2001
Issue No.545
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 2 - 8 August 2001 Issue No.545 |
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A puzzle comes to a head
Is this the statue of Meret or Nefertari? Nevine El-Aref wonders whether her guess is as good as yours
Identifying an ancient artefact should be a relatively easy task for Egyptologists. But the granite head of a Pharaonic princess, smuggled to Britain in 1992 and brought back to Egypt last Friday, is proving something of a puzzle.
For the past year it has been claimed that the head belonged to Princess Meret-Amun, the beautiful daughter of King Ramses II. However, this identification has now been rebutted by Gaballa Ali Gaballa, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). Immediately on his return from London last Friday with the boxed sculpture -- recovered along with six papyri, five in Demotic and one in Greek -- Gaballa proclaimed that the gray granite piece most probably belonged to Queen Nefertari, the beloved wife of Ramses II.
Egyptologists seem delighted with the challenge to pick up the gauntlet and define the statue's correct identity. "It was very difficult to identify the head because it had been disguised by layers of clay to make it appear as a fake or a copy of a real antiquity," Gaballa told Al-Ahram Weekly. But, on further examination, he added, any Egyptologist would realise that the head had the same facial features as Nefertari, and wore a similar distinguishing wig. "The base of the crown on the head was yet more evidence to support my theory," he pointed out.
The recovery of the items was the final chapter of a saga lasting many years, one of the biggest antiquities-smuggling investigations by Scotland Yard in collaboration with Egyptian police.
"I think that thieves all over the world have got the message that Egypt doesn't give up," Gaballa told a news conference at Cairo International Airport on his arrival.
The drama began in the early 1990s when Jonathan Tokeley Parry, a British antiquities restorer who was fascinated by ancient Egypt, smuggled several genuine Pharaonic objects out of the country for sale. Tokeley justified his action by claiming that Egyptians did not deserve to keep these priceless items. "Preserving them in private collections, in air- conditioned rooms and in the protection of wealthy people is the best protection of all," he said later in court.
The smuggler moved the items past border customs with some ease by disguising them under layers of plaster, which were painted by hand in a manner suggesting they were either fakes, or copies of antiquities produced by the Documentation Centre and sold in Egypt as genuine replicas.
In 1994 Andrew May, Tokeley's assistant, tried to sell 24 papyrus texts to an antiquities dealer, who asked him to identify the papyri to make sure that they were genuine. May took the papyri to the British Museum, where the curator immediately recognised them as part of a collection discovered in 1966 by a British mission in the animal necropolis of north Saqqara, and which had remained in Saqqara in storage. The museum immediately contacted Scotland Yard, the Egyptian Embassy in London, the SCA and the Egyptian Tourist and Antiquities Police. Investigations were launched and the clues led to Tokeley, who was arrested in Britain in 1997 and sentenced to six years imprisonment. In Egypt, he was sentenced in absentia to 15 years imprisonment with hard labour.
Nine Egyptians were also jailed in Egypt for their part in the theft.
The first consignment of the antiques was retrieved last year and included 27 papyrus texts in Demotic dating back to 300BC, 12 Coptic textiles, a Sixth Dynasty limestone relief of a seated woman named 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. They also included objects taken from the tomb of Hetep-Ka at Saqqara, including two false doors, three heads of the nobleman wearing a wig, and a limestone relief showing a butcher at work.
Gaballa told the Weekly that the case was not yet over, with legal action continuing to recover other items which had not yet been handed over by their purchasers. Among these was a head of Amenhotep III, which is known to have been deposited in a London branch of Citibank.
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