For the first time, the United States has signed a bilateral memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Egypt to impose restrictions on the importation of illicit antiquities into the US from Egypt. The MoU outlines the types of objects that require legal permits to enter the US and also involves law-enforcement training to assist in recognising artefacts and antiquities that may be illegally smuggled into the country. It was signed earlier this week in Washington by Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri and US Secretary of State John Kerry. Since 1983, the US has signed bilateral agreements with 16 countries, half of them in Central and South America. Egypt is the first Middle Eastern and North African country to sign such an agreement with the US. According to the MoU, Shaaban Abdel-Gawad, supervisor of the Antiquities Repatriation Department at the Ministry of Culture, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the US government would have to return to Egypt any material on a designated list. It would also need to use its best efforts to facilitate technical assistance in cultural resource management and security to Egypt under available programmes particularly in the public and/or private sectors as well as inform the Egyptian government of all seized Egyptian artefacts once they enter American territory through diplomatic channels. Abdel-Gawad said that Egypt should strengthen mechanisms to promote best practices in cultural resource management and should encourage coordination among the country's cultural heritage, tourism, and religious authorities, as well as its development agencies, in order to ensure the enforcement of laws that protect heritage sites from encroachment, unsanctioned appropriation, looting, and damage. Minister of Antiquities Khaled Al-Enany described the MoU as “very important” because it would help Egypt protect its priceless heritage and support the country in its fight against illicit antiquities trading and smuggling. Within the framework of MoU, the Egyptian Embassy in Washington has already repatriated four artefacts that were stolen and illegally smuggled out of Egypt to the US. The objects date to the Late Pharaonic Period and include a mummified hand, a painted child sarcophagus, a gilded mummy mask, an anthropoid lid of a wooden sarcophagus decorated with different religious scenes, as well as a painted linen mummy shroud decorated with a collar. These artefacts, Abdel-Gawad said, were seized as part of an extensive, five-year antiquities trafficking operation launched by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities named "Operation Mummy's Curse" in 2009. The mummy hand had arrived in a parcel at Los Angeles International Airport in January 2013 as a sci-fi movie prop. But officials noticed that the hand was part of an ancient Egyptian mummy, he said. According to the National Geographic magazine's website, investigations in Operation Mummy's Curse were led by US Homeland Security Investigations and the ICE in 2008 when federal authorities were alerted to an artifact offered for sale by New York-based antiquities dealer Mousa Khouli. “The artefact appeared identical to an object in the hands of a man in a photograph accompanying a 2003 article on the looting of the ancient site of Isin in Iraq,” the National Geographic wrote, adding that some 7,000 artefacts from countries including Egypt, Iraq, and Yemen were ultimately seized, along with more than $80,000 and a 9mm handgun. “Four men were eventually indicted in the case, with antiquities dealer Khouli sentenced to six months home confinement, up to 200 hours of community service, one year of probation, and a $200 fine. A collector, Joseph Lewis II, had all charges dismissed following a 12-month deferred prosecution agreement with the government,” the Website said. In April 2015, ICE handed over dozens of other artefacts to Egypt, including a nesting sarcophagus the agency had recovered from a garage in Brooklyn, New York. The mummy hand was relinquished voluntarily by its purchaser after it was seized by a US customs patrol in Los Angeles. It was initially believed to belong to a kidnapping victim, until a medical examiner assured the FBI that the "victim" had been dead for more than 2,000 years. Abdel-Gawad told the Weekly that although international agreements with foreign countries and Egypt's antiquities law had long protected the country's heritage, the recent boom of the antiquities black market had caused smugglers to use forged papers to loot and smuggle artefacts into the US under the guise of the legal antiquities market. The website Live Science recently wrote that US Census Bureau documents showed that about $26 million worth of artefacts were exported from Egypt to the US during the first six months of 2016. “This market can now be shut down through the newly signed MoU between Egypt and the United States which imposes tougher import restrictions on Egyptian archaeological materials that date from prehistoric times to 1517 CE,” Abdel-Gawad said. The Egyptian Embassy in Bern in Switzerland also received three parts of an ancient Egyptian stelae that was stolen and illegally smuggled out of the country this week. Abdel-Gawad said the stelae was carved of limestone and found by an Italian archaeological mission from Rome University inside Shashanq tomb TT27 at the Al-Assassif Necropolis on Luxor's west bank. The stelae belongs to a man called Seshen-nefertom, and it was found in four parts, three of them uncovered in 1976 and 1977, while the fourth was unearthed in 1988. While carrying out an inventory of the Al-Gurna Store in 1995, the ministry of antiquities noticed that the stelae was missing. A year ago the missing stelae was detected in Switzerland, and according to the bilateral agreement between Egypt and Switzerland signed in 2010 Egypt succeeded in repatriating it. Finally, Ministry of Antiquities efforts to recover two Islamic lamps from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) succeeded this week when the Egyptian embassy there received them on Tuesday. Both lamps were stolen from the stores of the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation in Fustat along with two others, Abdel-Gawad said. Replicas of the four lamps were put in their place, he said, adding that the four lamps were reported missing during an inventory in 2015 and the replicas found. In March 2016, one of the four lamps, which belonged to the Mameluke Sultan Barquq, was retrieved from London. Another of the newly recovered lamps from the UAE belonged to the Mameluke Prince Al-Selehdar, while another belonged to the Mameluke Sultan Hassan. The fourth lamp is still missing.
