France to return Egyptian relics

France decided yesterday to return to Egypt five relics stolen from Luxor’s Valley of the Kings and sold to the Louvre, two days after Cairo severed ties with the Paris museum in protest.

A special commission of the French museums agency decided unanimously to hand over the five painted wall fragments after ruling that they were indeed stolen in the 1980s before ending up at the Louvre in 2000 and 2003.

Egypt on Wednesday severed all ties with the Louvre to press demands that the Paris museum return the artifacts.

The French government has said the Louvre acted in good faith when it purchased the relics and that doubts were only raised in November after archaeologists discovered the tomb and the missing fragments.

Egyptian Antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said in Cairo that he believed the Paris museum had bought the antiquities even though its curators knew they were stolen.

“The purchase of stolen steles is a sign that some museums are prepared to encourage the destruction and theft of Egyptian antiquities,” said Hawass.

The five small relics were chipped away from the wall painting of an ancient Egyptian tomb dating back to the 18th dynasty and are currently in storage at the Louvre.

Museum curators purchased four of the five fragments in 2000 from the collection of French archaeologist Gaston Maspero and a fifth piece was bought in 2003 during a public sale at the Drouot auction house.

Egypt’s decision to suspend co-operation put a hold on conferences organized with the museum, as well as work carried out by the Louvre on the Pharaonic necropolis of Saqqara, south of the capital Cairo.

But within hours of Cairo’s announcement, Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand declared that France was ready to return the antiquities if they were indeed stolen.