CAIRO, EGYPT—Ahram Online reports that French officials handed over a limestone relief recovered from a Paris auction house during a ceremony at Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs headquarters. Shaaban Abdel-Gawad of the ministry’s Antiquities Repatriation Department said that the sculpture, which dates to the 30th Dynasty and depicts the goddess Sekhmet carrying a sun disk on her head, is thought to have been taken from a temple at the Saqqara necropolis sometime in the twentieth century. Hieroglyphs on the relief include the cartouche of King Nekhtenbo II. A collection of more than 40 artifacts seized at Charles de Gaulle Airport was also returned. Most of those objects date to the Coptic era, and include jewelry and cosmetic containers. For more on archaeology in Egypt, go to “World’s Oldest Dress.”
