A ten-centimetre-high bronze statuette stolen from the National Museum of Iraq during the American-British invasion in 2003 is back home, Nevine El-Aref reports. On Sunday journalists, photographers and TV crews crowded into room 44 on the ground floor of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo to witness the handover of an ancient Iraqi bronze statuette depicting a standing woman in a praying position to the Iraqi ambassador to Egypt, Abdel-Hadi Fadel. Ahmed Mustafa, director of the returned antiquities department at the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), told Al-Ahram Weekly that the story of the statuette goes back to 2005 when Egyptian border police stopped an Egyptian citizen who was attempting to smuggle the statuette into the country through the port of Nuweiba. An archaeological committee was set up to verify the object's provenance. "All the members of the committee affirmed that it was a Mesopotamian object," Mustafa said. At the museum where the statuette was on display to the assembled crowd, Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the SCA told reporters that the return of this statuette embodied the efforts of Egypt and Arab countries to protect and preserve the Iraqi heritage, most of which has come under threat of deterioration and robbery since the American-British invasion of 2003. Such efforts, Hawass asserted, were exerted from the first day of the invasion with Egypt having sent letters to all the authorities concerned urging them to protect and preserve Iraq's monuments during the invasion. Regrettably, however, the majority of the objects on display at the Iraqi National Museum were stolen, while several archaeological sites were damaged. As a result, Hawass continued, Egypt sent another warning letter to all international museums calling on them not to buy any Iraqi objects as they were stolen and illegally-smuggled antiquities. Hawass explained that six years ago Egypt did not have any archaeological representatives at any of its 24 border gates with the exception of Cairo International Airport. Egypt now has an SCA archaeological representative at 19 gates, which for its part has tightened security and prevented people trying to smuggle any antiquities, whether from Egypt or any other country. Hawass announced that next month Egypt's new antiquities law would be discussed at the People's Assembly in order to admit its application. The new law would hand down severe punishments to those convicted of robbing and trading antiquities. Fadel said that 14,000 artefacts had now been recovered out of the 15,000 looted since the invasion. Syria returned to Iraq 700 golden necklaces, daggers, clay statues and pots while the US returned 11 cylinder seals made from agate and alabaster dated between 3000 and 2000 BC.
