CAIRO, EGYPT—The Guardian reports that a wooden sarcophagus held at the Houston Museum of Natural Science has been repatriated to Egypt. Mostafa Waziri of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities said that surviving inscriptions on the coffin, which measures nearly 10 feet long, suggest it may have belonged to a priest named Ankhenmaat. He also explained that the coffin has been dated to Egypt’s Late Period, between about 712 and 332 B.C. The sarcophagus was looted from northern Egypt’s Abusir necropolis by an art trafficking network, and was smuggled through Germany and into the United States in 2008, according to Manhattan district attorney Alvin L. Bragg. A collector later loaned it to the museum in 2013. For more on Abusir, go to "In the Reign of the Sun Kings."
U.S. Museum Repatriates Sarcophagus to Egypt
News January 3, 2023
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