Ramesses II was one of the most powerful pharaohs of ancient Egypt (data map)
Cairo:
Egypt has welcomed the return of a 3,400-year-old statue of the head of Ramses II that was stolen and smuggled out of the country more than three decades ago, the Antiquities Ministry said on Sunday.
The statue is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo but is not on display. The artifact will be restored, the ministry said in a statement.
The statue was stolen from the Temple of Ramses II in the ancient city of Abydos in southern Egypt more than thirty years ago. The exact date is unclear, but Shaaban Abdel Gawad, the head of Egypt’s antiquities restitution department, said the work was estimated to have been stolen in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
Egyptian authorities discovered the artifact in 2013 when they were selling it at an exhibition in London. According to the Ministry of Antiquities, the artifact was transferred to several other countries before arriving in Switzerland.
“The head is part of a group of statues that depict King Ramses II seated with many Egyptian gods,” Abdel Gawad said.
Ramses II was one of the most powerful pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Also known as Ramesses the Great, he was the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt, who ruled from 1279 to 1213 BC.
Egypt worked with Swiss authorities to establish its legal ownership. Switzerland handed over the statue to the Egyptian embassy in Bern last year, but Egypt only recently brought the artifact home.
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