NEW YORK, NEW YORK—The Associated Press reports that the Metropolitan Museum of Art handed over an ancient gilded coffin to Egyptian officials after an investigation, conducted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s department of Homeland Security Investigations and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, determined it had been looted and smuggled out of Egypt sometime after the Egyptian revolution of 2011. The coffin was transported through United Arab Emirates to Germany, where it was conserved, and then to France, where in 2017 the museum purchased the artifact, which was accompanied by fraudulent documents. The coffin is thought to have been crafted in Egypt between 150 and 50 B.C. for Nedjemankh, a high-ranking priest in Egypt’s Minya region. To read about a recently discovered tomb and coffin in Egypt, go to "The Unseen Mummy Chamber."
