CAIRO - The Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) received 200 artifacts from Al-Ahly (National) Bank Sunday and delivered them to the Egyptian Museum for restoration and documentation, the Minister of Culture, Farouq Hosni, said. Zahi Hawass, the SCA Secretary General, said that the collection had been stored in the Bank's safe since the 20th century. “It includes artifacts dating back to the Pharaonic, Greco- Roman, Coptic and Islamic eras. Among the objects are limestone statuary heads of ancient Egyptian and Greco-Roman deities such as Horus, Hathor and Ptah, as well as Roman terracotta statues and twenty coins from the Islamic and modern times. Hawass added that two archaeological and legal committees inspected the artifacts and substantiated their authenticity. Chairman of Al-Ahly Bank Tarek Amer said that these objects were owned by foreigners, who had lived in Egypt during the late 19th and 20th centuries. The foreigners were private collectors and had stored their collections inside two-Bank safes. Since the early 20th century, no one had claimed these objects. They remained under the care of the Bank until its executive board decided to give them to the SCA. Hussein Abdel Bassir, the head of the committee that inspected the objects, said that they were totally genuine and intact.
