Louvre agrees to return Egyptian relics

From Press.ir

The Louvre has agreed to return a set of ancient wall painting fragments to Egypt after Cairo warned of severing ties with the museum.

The National Scientific Commission for the Museum Collections of France decided on Friday to return the five 3,000-year-old fragments after ruling that they were stolen from a tomb in Luxor's Valley of the King in the 1980s.

The fragments, known as steles, "must return to Egyptian territory" because they are "part of the cultural heritage" and are "very important from a scientific viewpoint," said the director of international cooperation at the antiquities authority, Jihane Zaki.

The relics "should never have left their place of origin," Louvre president Henri Loyrette admitted.

The restitution of the fragments, however, does not guarantee the return of other Egyptian artifacts.

"Everyone agrees on the principle" that Egypt should have control of all historic relics, but the "procedures are debatable," a European diplomat in Cairo said.

Egypt is still struggling to retrieve priceless Egyptian antiquities from the time of the Pharaohs, housed in foreign museums, AFP reported.

"It is the Egyptian people's right to see works of art from their country's civilization," said former head of Egypt's antiquities authority, Abdel Halim Nuredd.

The Rosetta Stone (British Museum), Queen Nefertiti bust (Berlin's Neues Museum), Dendera Zodiac (Louvre), bust of pyramid builder Ankhaf (Boston Museum of Fine Art) and statue of architect Hemiunu (Pelizaeus Museum of Hildesheim) are only a few Egyptian relics dispersed in museums around the world.