Israel to return ancient coffin lid to Egypt

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Israel to return ancient coffin lid to Egypt

Post by Winged Isis »

Ancient Egyptian coffin lid belonging to unidentified Sixteenth Dynasty nobleman will be returned to Egypt from Israel following year of negotiations
Nevine El-Aref , Wednesday 29 Aug 2012

After almost one year of diplomatic negotiations, Israel has offered Egypt two pieces of a painted anthropoid coffin lid that belonged to an unidentified 16th Dynasty nobleman. The lid is expected to arrive in Cairo within two weeks after having been seized by the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) from a shop showroom in Jerusalem's Old City in April of last year.

Osama El-Nahas, director-general of the Repatriation of Antiquities Department at Egypt's Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA), told Ahram Online that the lid had been very well preserved despite being broken in two. Each part of the lid is made of carved wood, painted on plaster and decorated with colourful religious scenes.

According to El-Nahas, the lid was stolen and illegally smuggled out of the country and slightly modified to look like a replica. It was first taken to Dubai, from where it was transported to Israel, where it subsequently turned up in a shop in Jerusalem's Old City.

Last September, MSA officials formally requested the object's return to Egypt. Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim said his ministry had sent an official letter to Egypt's embassy in Tel Aviv requesting Israel to take all legal and diplomatic procedures necessary for the object's restoration to Egypt.

After several meetings with Israeli counterparts, the IAA bought the lid from the shop owner and promised it to Egypt. Ibrahim says that within two weeks the lid will arrive in Cairo, where it will be stored at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square for restoration before being put in a special display in the museum’s foyer.


http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent ... Egypt.aspx


Carpe diem! :le:
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Re: Israel to return ancient coffin lid to Egypt

Post by Horus »

Always worth noting that when inteligent people talk to each other, things usually get done, much better than just making demads as some people have done in the past.
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Re: Israel to return ancient coffin lid to Egypt

Post by Ra-Mont »

It would be wonderful if the Israeli government would also return the extensive collection of Egyptian archaeological artefacts stolen by their General Moshe Dayan in the course of his illustrious career. He amassed a considerable collection, which was sold to the state after his death in 1981. They could start by giving back the Hathor pillar he admitted to looting from Serabit el Khadem after he landed a helicopter there in 1956. I shudder to think what else he helped himself to on that trip. The return of one damaged coffin lid is barely a start.

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Re: Israel to return ancient coffin lid to Egypt

Post by Horus »

I think you will find that particular incident took place in July 1969 and not 1956 as you posted, maybe he considered that because the turquoise mines operated by the Egyptians in antiquity and were worked by slaves, some from his part of the ancient world, he had a claim on some of claim to it. After all some claim that the Hathor head may well be the origin of the biblical Golden Calf.
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Re: Israel to return ancient coffin lid to Egypt

Post by Ra-Mont »

In fact, Dayan looted Serabit el Khadem in 1956 and in 1969. In the earlier one (actually three visits) he made off with: "an inscribed stele, a large obelisk and a few more pieces." The stele, damaged on being loaded into a truck, apparenly bore the face of Hathor, so perhaps it became confused with another artefact taken on the 1969 visit. Uncertainty covers what happened to Dayan's loot from Serabit el Khadem. According to one source, which I don't believe, the relics were later returned to the site. The alternative story is that the Hathor artefact wound up in Dayan's private collection, while the rest were given to the Hebrew University. Whatever, I'm certain the General's motives for targeting Serabit el Khadem had nothing to do with any misguided ancestral linkage, since he had form over many years for helping himself to antiquities from various Israeli sites. Such disruption showed no respect for heritage.

I was at Serabit el Khadem in the spring. On returning I was online-browsing somebody else's snapshots of the site that were a few years old when I saw in one picture a baboon statue of less than a metre in height standing outside the little cave of Sopdu. There was no sign of it on my own photographs. We can't blame Moshe Dayan for that one, but I was left hoping that it had been taken back to the safety of the Cairo Museum and hadn't, as was probably the case, been removed by jeep to furnish somebody's private collection.

One can decided for ones' self whether Moshe Dayan was a pillager of antiquities -- or a "Robin Hood" rescuer of them, as he painted himself -- from the contents of this article:

http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_27.htm
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