Looting antiquities and smuggling them out the country is a centuries-old business. It is a crime Egypt was fighting rather more successfully, managing to recover 5,000 stolen and illegally smuggled artefacts in the last five years. It was the 2011 revolution that had a negative impact, with many sites subjected to looting due to the absence of security in the aftermath of the revolution. Trading in stolen antiquities witnessed an unprecedented surge as thieves and tomb raiders attacked archaeological sites, museums and store galleries, looted artefacts and sold them to the highest bidders. Some artefacts were seen on the auction lists of several international auction halls such as Christies, eBay and Bonham's. Egypt has been able to recover some, but others are still hidden and reported missing. During his five-day tour to the United States of America to retrieve eight ancient Egyptian artefacts that were stolen from illicit excavation work, Minister of Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim asked the Obama administration to take strict measures while importing ancient artefacts from Egypt. These measures, said Ibrahim, must allow the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to seize any Egyptian artefact entering the US as long as it does not have any official or legal documents showing that it left Egypt legally. At present customs officials do not have the authority to seize Egyptian objects unless they have specific information or strong suspicion that they were stolen. In fact, the customs officials can confiscate imported cultural and archaeological artefacts from 16 other nations that signed agreements under a 1983 law, the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA). This convention is the legislation that implements the US ratification of the 1970 UNESCO Convention to curb archaeological pillaging and illicit trafficking in cultural property. The CPIA grants the president the authority to impose import restrictions on categories of archaeological and ethnological materials that are vulnerable to pillage following a request from another State that is a party to the Convention, Such a request is filed because a State Party believes that pillaging is placing its cultural heritage in jeopardy. Ibrahim pointed out that Egypt would seek a long-term agreement with Washington specifying what kinds of objects to restrict after submitting a complex formal proposal. To discuss such a request, Ibrahim met with the State Department's assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs, Anne Patterson, and the assistant secretary for education and cultural affairs, Evan Ryan. In a statement published in The New York Times, the department said, “We stand ready to work with Egypt, and any other government, on preserving cultural heritage, and look forward to Egypt submitting a formal request for a bilateral cultural property agreement.” The statement also explained that, to receive emergency restrictions, a country must put together a formal proposal that documents, among other things, that there is actual risk and damage to its cultural heritage sites. It also must assemble a list of the kinds of objects it wants blocked and lay out plans for internal policing. To support Egypt's call for restrictions, the Capital Archaeological Institute at George Washington University has established new group called the International Coalition to Protect Egyptian Antiquities (ICPEA). The group aims to persuade American auction houses, art dealers and individuals to halt the sales of any Egyptian antiquities that left Egypt illegally. They urged them to follow the lead of eBay and Christie's. In May, after experts from the British Museum concluded that certain Egyptian artefacts had been stolen after the 2011 revolution, Christie's halted the London sale of the artefacts put up for auction by a man who claimed he had inherited them from his father. Ibrahim also praised eBay for removing hundreds of items put up for bidding since 2011 after Egyptian experts obtained several of the objects and determined through testing that they were authentic, undocumented artifacts. At the Egyptian Embassy in Washington Ibrahim signed a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) with the representative of the ICPEA Deborah Lehr to fight the illegal trade of stolen antiquities. The MOU also aims at developing museums, creating job opportunities in the field of antiquities and preserving archaeological sites. Lehr told the Middle East Media Centre that the first initiative under the MOU is to create a national registry of all excavated Egyptian antiquities. It also includes training for workers in the antiquities field, raising people's awareness of their cultural heritage and its protection as well as providing Egypt with technology and resources to protect its antiquities. Ibrahim said that stolen Egyptian antiquities fall into two categories: objects stolen from museums and storehouses, which number some 3,890 pieces; and objects obtained through illegal excavations, whose number is difficult to estimate. In an attempt to contribute to the development programme of museums implemented by the ministry, Ibrahim signed a framework agreement between the ministry and the Museums Supporting Centre of the Smithsonian Institute in the US. This programme aims at training curators on state-of-the-art-technology used in museum displays and the restoration of the artefacts as well as methods to protect them from robbery. Ibrahim also discussed with the centre the possibility of establishing a fully equipped restoration laboratory for the restoration of glass artefacts at the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA). This laboratory, Ibrahim said, would be a contribution from the cultural authorities at the US to help Egypt in its work to rehabilitate MIA collection items that were damaged after a bomb explosion two months ago at the adjacent Security Directorate. He also asked them to establish a similar laboratory at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation in Fustat.
