CAIRO - Egypt has recovered an ancient artifact that was stolen more than two decades before, and later smuggled out of the country, State Minister for Antiquities Zahi Hawass said. A specialised panel examined the piece at the Foreign Ministry in Cairo where it arrived from abroad and then sent it to the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities. Mohamed Abdel-Maksoud, chief of the Minister's office said that the relic was a piece of granite, on which the head and shoulders of goddess Akhat were carved. It was a part of a huge plaque from a temple dedicated to Isis, dating back to the late 30th Pharaonic Dynasty (380 BC to 343 BC). The plaque was discovered in the Delta governorate of el-Gharbiya and documented in 1977, but stolen in 1990. The Egyptian antiquities authorities have been pursuing Pharaonic relics that were taken out of the country. Monitoring famous international auction halls has been part of the strategy to discover these ancient treasures and then working hard to get them home. When this relic was discovered in London, the Egyptian Embassy intervened and submitted the legal documentation proving that it belonged to Egypt. This is the second artifact Egypt has retrieved over two weeks, through co-operation between the Ministry of Antiquities and the Foreign Ministry, the first having been recovered from Mexico.
