Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass said he is now preparing a legal report to officially call for getting back the Ka-Nefer-Nefer Egyptian Mask from the US Saint Louis Art Museum in an attempt to get back the mask through the diplomatic channel. Speaking to Al-Masry Al-Youm, Hawass said the report will be handed over to the US Department of State, pointing out that the report is being prepared under a decision from the National Commission for the Restoration of Egyptian Antiquities. The US museum refuses to give back the mask to Egypt because it believed that the mask is owned by who discovered it under the law of antiquities division, which was in effect at the time. It was stipulating that the discovered antiquities would be divided between who discovered them and the State.
The mask, said to date back to the Nineteenth Dynasty (1293-1185 B.C.), was unearthed early in 1952 by an up-and-coming Egyptian archaeologist named Mohammed Zakaria Goneim. However, the law of antiquities division was effective only on foreign archaeologists and not the Egyptians.
A committee has been formed of the greatest experts of the international law, including ambassadors Nabil al-Arabi, Nabil Fahmi, Abdel Ra'ouf al-Ridi and Wageh Hanafie. The committee will discuss this problem, especially after the investigations had shown that the mask was "stolen", Hawass said.
For his part, the SCA Legal Counsel Ashraf al-Shenawi said the technical and archaeological sides proved that the mask was discovered by Goneim in 1952 and registered under No. 6119, page 19, in the records of Saqqara.
Al-Shenawi said that the prosecution's investigations proved that the mask was stolen. The employees received the mask in July 28, 1959 among a number of other antiquities from Saqqara to take it to the Egyptian Museum to be showed in a Japanese museum. After that, the mask was disappeared from the boxes, which contained the antiquities.
Ka-Nefer-Nefer is unmummified body of a woman, wrapped in a simple reed mat. Her remains, which dated to the Nineteenth Dynasty, were badly decomposed, but she wore an elaborate mask over her head and shoulders. Her face, covered by a thin sheet of blended copper and gold, peeked from beneath an intricate resin wig molded into plaits. The diadem that crowned her head was made of glass, as were her eyes and nipples. In each hand she held an amulet symbolizing strength and welfare.
