Egypt has recovered parts of the coffins that will be stored in a museum in Cairo.
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G. TOMASEVIC / REUTERS
Thousands of ancient works have landed on Egyptian soil.
They had left the territory fraudulently and were found in the Museum of the Bible in Washington, the Department of Tourism and Antiquities said in a statement on Wednesday.
According to the manager in charge of the returned items file, Chaabane Abdeljawad, quoted in the press release, these are nearly 5,000 antiquities, mainly manuscripts, but also funeral masks, parts of coffins and heads of stone statues. .
The pieces will be stored at the Coptic Museum in Cairo, the text added.
Unexplained disappearance
It was not immediately clear how and by whom these pieces were illegally removed from Egypt and how they arrived at the Museum of the Bible in Washington.
But the Egyptian authorities have been negotiating with this museum for years to recover them.
During the popular revolt of 2011 which ousted Hosni Mubarak from power, many pieces of the inestimable Egyptian heritage were damaged, destroyed or stolen and then left illegally.
Thousands of works subsequently resurfaced on the international market, on websites or at auctions.
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