Egypt, Demanding Artifacts’ Return, Cuts Ties With the Louvre
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 7, 2009

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt said Wednesday that its antiquities department had severed ties with the Louvre Museum, because it had refused to return what the Egyptians say are stolen artifacts.



The decision represents one of the most aggressive attempts yet by Egypt to reclaim relics from some of the world’s leading Egyptology collections.

Officials of the Louvre have said that they were open to returning the artifacts to Egypt, but that a special committee must still make a final decision. France’s Culture Ministry also said it would be ready to return the pieces if the committee approved.



The decision by the Egyptian antiquities department, the Supreme Council of Antiquities, means that no archaeological expeditions connected to the Louvre will be allowed to work in Egypt. The country has already suspended an excavation sponsored by the Louvre at the massive necropolis of Saqqara and it canceled a lecture in Egypt by a former curator of the Louvre.



“The Louvre Museum refused to return four archaeological reliefs to Egypt that were stolen during the 1980s from the tomb of the noble Tetaki,” said a statement from the head of the antiquities department, Zahi Hawass. The tomb is located near the famed temple city of Luxor.

The reliefs, paintings of a nobleman’s journey to the afterlife, were chipped from the walls of the tomb by thieves, according to the council of antiquities.

A spokeswoman for the council said it would meet on Friday with the Louvre to try to resolve the matter. “We do have great collaboration with them,” she said. “What I hear is they are willing to return the items.”



The Louvre’s press office said that a national committee made up of specialists from France’s museums and other experts would meet on Friday to decide the issue, with final approval given by the Culture Ministry.

Frédéric Mitterrand, the French culture minister and a nephew of former President François Mitterrand, said he thought that the artifacts should be returned and that the Louvre acquired the pieces in good faith in 2000 and 2003, according to a statement from his office.

“It wasn’t until November 2008, after archaeologists rediscovered the tomb from which the frescoes appear to have come, that serious doubts emerged about the legality of their removal from Egyptian territory,” the statement said.

If the committee decides it is in favor of returning the pieces to Egypt, Mr. Mitterrand’s office said he was “ready to immediately return the frescoes to Egyptian authorities.”



The French said there were five fragments, while the Egyptians report four. The discrepancy could not immediately be reconciled.

Mr. Hawass, who became chairman of the council of antiquities in 2002, has made recovering stolen Egyptian antiquities a priority.

He has made several high profile requests for the return of Egyptian artifacts from the world’s biggest museums.

At the top of his list are the bust of Nefertiti, the wife of the famed monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaten, that is in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, and the Rosetta Stone, a basalt slab with an inscription that was the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics, which is in the British Museum.