New York museum to return Tutankhamun's tomb artworks to Egypt

Wed, 10 Nov 2010

New York - A breakthrough agreement has been reached between New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Egypt over the return of 19 ancient Egyptian objects that were found in ancient King Tutankhamun's tomb, the museum said Wednesday.

Thomas P. Campbell, director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt, said jointly that the 19 objects are immediately Egyptian property.

"Research conducted by the Museum's Department of Egyptian Art has produced detailed evidence leading us to conclude without doubt that 19 objects, which entered the Met's collection over the period of the 1920s to 1940s, originated in Tutankhamun's tomb," Campbell said.

He said the agreement formally acknowledged that "title to the objects belongs to Egypt."

Hawass said the US museum has demonstrated a "wonderful gesture" by returning the objects.

"For many years the museum, and especially the Egyptian art department, has been a strong partner in our ongoing efforts to repatriate illegally exported antiquities," Hawass said.

The museum said the small objects - ranging from study samples to a 1.9-cm-high bronze dog and a sphinx bracelet-element - can be attributed "with certainty" to the tomb of King Tut, as he is affectionately known.

The tomb of the famed Egyptian boy king was discovered by British archeologist Howard Carter in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings.

The Egyptian government has decided to display the 19 objects in the Tutankhamun exhibition in New York's Times Square until January. The objects will then go back to The Metropolitan Museum of Art for exhibition in the Met's Egyptian collection for six months.

The objects will return to Egypt in June 2011.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/352964,tutankhamuns-tomb-artworks-egypt.html.