On the evening of the 17th local time, the ancient coin handover ceremony was held at the National Museum of Cairo, the capital. The Egyptian Minister of Tourism and Cultural Heritage Khalid Anani personally handed over 31 ancient Chinese coins seized in Egypt in early 2018 to the Chinese Ambassador to Egypt Liao Liqiang.
The cultural relics returned by the Egyptian government this time also include some smuggled cultural relics from Saudi Arabia and India.
The smuggled cultural relics include coins from the Han and Tang Dynasties, Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, which can be traced back to the Western Han and even earlier Warring States period.
Prior to this, experts from the State Administration of Cultural Heritage of China had confirmed that more than 20 of the ancient coins were national cultural relics and had a high cultural relic value.
In recent years, China and Egypt have continuously strengthened cooperation in the field of cultural relics protection and cultural heritage exchanges.
These ancient coins are the second batch of cultural relics returned by the Egyptian government to China since the two countries signed an agreement on the protection and return of stolen cultural property illegally trafficked from their country of origin in 2010.
(Headquarters reporter Wu Aimin and Mi Chunze)