A 4,200-year-old limestone art piece depicting a hunting scene is restituted from Switzerland, Nevine El-Aref reports An archaeological mission from the Ministry of State for Antiquities Affairs will travel to Switzerland next week to receive the newly recovered relief from the Antikhenmuseum in Basel. The relief is carved in limestone and depicts a hunting scene from the daily life of its owner. The piece is 51cm high and 83cm in width and dates back to the Fifth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom. The restitution of the relief is part of a repatriation campaign launched in 2002 by Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs Zahi Hawass when he was secretary-general of what was then the Supreme Council of Antiquities. Hawass threatened to cut scientific and cooperation ties with any museum, university or other institution that held back stolen antiquities from the country or those who bought any stolen artefact. Benno Widmer, head of the specialised body for the international transfer of cultural property, wrote in a letter to the ministry that the relief had not been registered in the Interpol database of stolen works of art, nor has Art Loss Register found it registered as stolen in their database when it conducted a search prior to the acquisition of the object by the Antikhenmuseum. However, Widmer wrote, the Antikhenmuseum was informed in April 2011 by a well known and reputable professor of Egyptology that the item was stolen from Saqqara. The museum has offered to voluntarily return the piece to Egypt. The Antikhenmuseum has already sent back the eye of a colossal quartzite statue of Amenhotep III found in 1970 at his funerary temple in Kom Al-Hettan on the west bank of Luxor. The eye was smuggled out of the country, then loaned to the museum by a private collector where it was recognised by Egyptologist Hourig Sourouzian, and returned to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in October 2008. "The return of this object is also significant because it is the first artefact to be repatriated to Egypt from abroad since the revolution," Hawass said. He stated that the ministry was continuing to pursue its campaign to repatriate stolen artefacts "with determination and perseverance". In response to foreign criticism that the situation in Egypt is not safe enough for objects to be returned, Hawass pointed out that of the many museums in the country, the Egyptian Museum was the only one broken into during the revolution, however, the museum was protected by a human chain of young people demonstrating in Tahrir Square. The one million tourists who were in Egypt at the time all left the country safely, Hawass added. Hawass said that if what happened in Cairo -- when the police abandoned the streets for four hours on 28 January 2011 -- had happened in any other city in the world, there would have been chaos on an even greater scale. He insists that artefacts stolen from Egypt should be returned, adding that many pieces are expected back soon.
