Relief back home
A limestone relief stolen a decade ago from Isis Temple in Giza has been recovered. Nevine El-Aref attended its arrival from Paris
Under the Ministry of Culture's campaign to recover artefacts that have been removed from the country illegally, a limestone relief dating from the 26th dynasty arrived at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo from France early this week.
The relief came up for sale at the PIASA auction hall in Paris, where a number of authentic objects stolen from Egypt and Lebanon were displayed for sale.
Culture Minister Farouk Hosni describes the relief as one of the most beautiful of the 26th dynasty. It features a man of the reign of Pharaoh Psammetikhos I turning to the left side and wearing a callote headdress. "He looks like a priest surrounded by columns inscribed with hieroglyphic texts," Hosni added.
Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the relief, which is 35cm tall, 58,5 cm wide and weighs 30kg, was chipped out of a huge, fully decorated wall of the Temple of Isis behind Queen Henutsen's Pyramid on the Giza plateau during the last century.
Inside this temple is a stela with a hieroglyphic text recording that Pharaoh Khufu was the person who discovered the Temple of Isis and the Sphinx.
"According to this stela, the Sphinx could be dated from earlier than Pharaoh Khufu's reign," said Hawass. He insisted the information in the text must be incorrect because, according to Hawass, studies and other discoveries in the area proved that the priests of the Temple of Isis wrote the stela in order to bestow more importance on the goddess Isis and her divinity, and to enhance her position as a sacred goddess worshipped before the fourth dynasty.
Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud, head of antiquities of Lower Egypt and the man who brought back the object from Paris, said the relief was a very important artefact which was mentioned in a report written by the French archaeologist Olivier Bordeau at College de France in Paris, as well as in the book of the Egyptian Egyptologist Selim Hassan entitled The Great Sphinx and its Secrets and written in 1953. It was also mentioned in a scientific document issued in Boston in 1991.
Abdel-Maqsoud added that the Interpol was investigating the case in order to identify the smugglers who stole the relief and handed it to PIASA. Mamdouh El- Damatti, director of the Egyptian Museum, said that after the relief had been restored it would be put on display as a "piece of the month".
