Egypt reclaims 3,400-year-old statue of Ramesses II found in Switzerland
The head sculpture has now rejoined other Ramesses II artefacts like this in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Egypt.
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Egypt has welcomed home a 3,400-year-old statue depicting the head of King Ramesses II after it was stolen and smuggled out of the country more than three decades ago, the country's antiquities ministry said on Sunday.
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Egito recupera estátua de 3400 anos encontrada na Suíça
The statue is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo but not on display. The artefact will undergo restoration, the ministry said in a statement.
The statue was stolen from the Ramesses II temple in the ancient city of Abydos in Southern Egypt more than three decades ago. The exact date is not known, but Shaaban Abdel Gawad, who heads Egypt’s antiquities repatriation department, said the piece is estimated to have been stolen in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
Egyptian authorities spotted the artefact when it was offered for sale in an exhibition in London in 2013. It moved to several other countries before reaching Switzerland, according to the antiquities ministry.
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Switzerland returns fragment of statue of Ramesses II to Egypt
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Switzerland has returned to Egypt a fragment of a statue of the pharaoh Ramesses II that is more than 3,400 years old.
“This head sculpture is part of a group of statues which depict King Ramesses II seated alongside a number of Egyptian deities,” Abdel Gawad said.
Ramesses II was one of ancient Egypt’s most powerful pharaohs. Also known as Ramesses the Great, he was the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt and ruled from 1279 to 1213 BC.
Egypt collaborated with Swiss authorities to establish its rightful ownership. Switzerland handed over the statue to the Egyptian embassy in Bern last year, but it was only recently that Egypt brought the artefact home.
Adapted from German by DeepL/dkk
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The war on stolen artefacts
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Switzerland was once a hot destination for stolen cultural artefacts. But now it’s trying hard to secure the return of treasures.
It’s working closely with the Italian authorities. The latest handover was in October: the Swiss gave the Italian embassy in Bern 27 objects of huge historic and artistic value. These included 26 Etruscan artefacts from a private collection and a 2,000-year-old marble bust, found at the Geneva free port.
The illicit trafficking of cultural artefacts is the world’s third-largest illegal market, after drugs and weapons. Countries such as Italy, which has a rich cultural heritage, have been working hard for decades to stop it.
As the Lugano lawyer and expert in art law Dario Jucker explains, stolen cultural property represents a vast illegal market.
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