Egypt’s authorities said after an investigation that a staff member at Cairo’s Egyptian Museum stole a 3,000-year-old gold bracelet linked to Pharaoh Amenemope and melted it down for its metal value. The theft happened earlier this month.
The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said it found out about the loss during a lab inventory for an overseas shipment. They quickly told the police and prosecutors, set up a special audit committee, and sent a picture of the missing piece to all the airport, seaport, and land-border units in the country. The ministry also made it clear that the pictures that were going around online depicted several bracelets that were still on exhibit, not the one that was lost.
The Interior Ministry said that investigators followed the bracelet from a museum restoration worker to a silver broker, then to a jewelry workshop owner, and eventually to a smelter who melted it down with other things. Four persons were arrested, and the police found about 194,000 Egyptian pounds—about $4,000—in cash. This is because ancient gold is worth less as scrap than it is as a cultural artifact.
Before the revelation, experts on cultural heritage said that a looted artifact could be sold secretly to a private buyer, exported and resold with fake provenance, or destroyed for its gold. They said that melting usually makes less money but makes it difficult to find the crime. Earlier this month, forensic archaeologist Christos Tsirogiannis talked to CNN about such concerns. They are the same as what investigators are saying now.
Officials revealed that the missing item was a modest gold band with a single round lapis lazuli bead on it. It was from the Third Intermediate Period and was linked to Amenemope of the 21st Dynasty, who ruled from Tanis in the Nile Delta. The museum’s Tanis collection has thousands of items dug up from the royal necropolis that was found in 1940. The loss is especially sad for Egypt’s cultural community.
With inputs from agencies.
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