Egyptian Antiquities

In the sixteenth century BCE, the pharaoh Amenhotep I founded the village of Deir el-Medina, outside of Thebes. The settlement was an unusual one, developed specifically to house the artisans and craftspeople who worked on and protected the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens on the western bank of the Nile, near modern-day Luxor. Years of tomb robberies and desecration forced the pharaohs to reconsider their conspicuous means of marking the locations of their royal tombs; they replaced large pyramids and other structures with subterranean passages marked only by entryways cut into the rockface. The workers’ village was separated from the rest of Theban society, and for some time, this isolation worked.

By the twelfth century BCE, during the reign of Ramses III, economic and social conditions had worsened, and the lure of quick gain from the looting of precious objects meant that theft from tombs once again became commonplace.

Ancient Egyptian society had a relatively advanced (albeit ruthless) legal system that was documented on papyrus. Several such documents detail investigations, trials, suspects, witnesses and sentences of those accused of robbing royal tombs during the time of Ramses IX and X. The Meyer papyri (A and B), now housed in the Liverpool Museum, are among the most detailed. Even in ancient Egypt, legal jargon was “monotonous,” as described by Egyptologist T. Eric Peet in 1915. Suspects were frequently interrogated and pushed for confessions through beatings and other often-brutal means of persuasion, but despite this, it seems not all were invariably found guilty.

This period during the reign of the 20th Dynasty, whose rulers took their names from the prosperous 19th Dynasty ruler Ramses II, was married with disorder. The great ruler’s successors were significantly weaker, and the empire gradually crumbled, giving way to increased lawlessness and theft.

The next great wave of thievery, or perhaps more delicately, “cultural acquisition,” did not come until the later colonial era of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries CE. Despite some early gains, Napoleon’s 1798 military invasion of Egypt ended in disaster. The cultural and scientific portion of his “expeditions” however, which included more than 100 scientists and intellectuals, was far more fruitful. The birth of modern Egyptology is often credited to what has been named the Napoleonic Egyptian Scientific Expedition, which lasted for three years and resulted in several works detailing the culture and landscape of the country, both ancient and modern, most notable Description de l’Égypte, published between 1809 and 1829.

Not surprisingly, France’s invasion of Egypt also included the pilfering of numerous artifacts, some priceless and others more common, for the purported purpose of scholarly pursuits. However, the accumulation of many of these objects was briskly interrupted by the British, who—when they landed on Egyptian shores—supported the faltering Ottoman rulership and worked to push out the French. Out of this colonial clash on Egyptian soil came the Treaty of Alexandria, signed on September 2, 1801, which included an article mandating that the artifacts claimed by the French would be handed over to Britain. With vigorous protest by the French scholars, the British conceded to the retention of some minor pieces, but the major artifacts, including the famed Rosetta Stone, ended up in British hands. They were passed along to King George III, then deposited in the British Museum, where they remain.

Although Europeans had begun collecting Egyptian artifacts before the Napoleonic invasion, the size, scale and significance of the objects collected during this period whetted a seemingly insatiable appetite for precious ancient pieces. As early as the first half of the nineteenth century, laws were introduced to safeguard artifacts seized by foreigners in great quantities. The first law protecting antiquities was enacted during the reign of Muhammad Ali Pasha. The Ordinance of 1835 prohibited the export of antiquities without proper approvals and documentation. Throughout the rest of the nineteenth century, several more laws were passed creating stricter and more detailed legislation to govern the legal excavation, smuggling and export in antiquities. Despite (and likely because of) this, by the mid-1900s, an elaborate black market of smuggling had been established. In response, a law was passed in 1951 that significantly increased the severity of punishment for violating antiquities laws and prohibited the export of any unique items, indicating that Egypt must possess at least one similar object. Still, there was a flourishing market for the legal trade of Egyptian antiquities until 1983, when a strict law was passed proclaiming that all antiquities on Egyptian soil belonged to the state.

The most recent major wave of theft in Egypt occurred during the Arab Spring of 2011, and in the following two years of political instability. On the night of January 28, 2011, looters entered the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, commonly known as the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, the epicenter of protests, and stole numerous priceless artifacts. Although some never left the country and were quickly returned, others showed up on the international black market shortly thereafter. In the same period, instability throughout Egypt allowed for extensive looting of excavation sites across the country. The theft in El Hibeh, the modern name of the ancient city of Teudjoy, in Middle Egypt, was so extensive that it could be observed by satellite. Shortly after the June 2013 uprising that toppled President Mohamed Morsi, the Mallawi Museum in Minya, Upper Egypt, was ransacked; 1,050 of the 1,089 artifacts that were housed in the museum were looted. This increase in crime was the result of economic troubles, illegal construction on protected sites and a security breakdown.

Just as in ancient times, the force driving the acquisition and trade in Egyptian artifacts is profit. Official estimates place the value of the Egyptian antiquities market at $20 billion. But the lines between legal and illicit trade are blurred, and so too are questions of ownership of cultural property. Many pieces on the international market were legally taken out of the country prior to 1983, but the provenance of many others is questionable at best and often illicit.

For the better part of two decades, the Egyptian government has been working aggressively to repatriate key pieces removed from the country. Earlier efforts focused on pieces of greater significance, like the Rosetta Stone and the bust of Nefertiti, located in the Neues Museum in Berlin. These requests and others have thus far been rejected by the host countries, which cite legal acquisition, fragility of the piece or concern over care once returned to Egypt. The latter, which questions Egypt’s ability to care for its own cultural legacy in a manner reminiscent of colonial conceptions of superiority.

Over the past several years, advocates inside and outside the country have shifted their focus to pieces that have more clearly been acquired through illegal means, and they have gotten thousands of these artifacts returned. In some cases, Egypt has leveraged the allure of its existing and untapped stockpile of treasures to convince those unwilling to cooperate. This was the case when the Ministry of Antiquities briefly cut ties with the Louvre, which had initially refused to return four reliefs from a tomb on the West Bank of Luxor that were rumored to have been purchased illegally with forged papers. The Louvre eventually relented in the hopes of displaying other treasures in the future.

Still, many attempts to return objects have failed. In 1952, the Ka-Nefer-Nefer funerary mask was unearthed near the Step Pyramid of Djoser, in Saqqara. Egyptian government archeologist Mohamed Zakaria found the mask covering the decomposed corpse of a 19th Dynasty noblewoman. The precise journey of the mask following its discovery is unclear. From its home in the Cairo Museum, Egyptian officials claim the precious piece was sent to Japan for exhibition, where it disappeared. However, according to American court documents, the mask was never sent to Japan and mostly remained in storage in Saqqara until its disappearance sometime between 1966 and 1973. Several decades later, Lebanese art dealer Phoenix Ancient Art put it up for auction; the dealers have been linked to selling artifacts looted by ISIS, but they deny the accusations. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Phoenix Ancient Art claimed the mask had been floating around the international art market since its discovery in the 1950s and was purchased by the St. Louis Art Museum in 1998. Yet even with US government support, Egypt tried for years to have the mask returned but eventually lost its final appeal in 2014.

More recently, Egypt attempted to stop the 2019 sale by Christie’s auction house in London of a 3,000-year-old statue of Tutankhamun. Christie’s insisted that the sale was legitimate, but Egyptian officials maintained that the statue had been taken illegally from Egypt in the 1970s. An anonymous buyer ultimately bought the statue for approximately $6 million.

Earlier this year, Egypt amended the 1983 law to increase penalties for illegal activity, including stiff fines and jail time for those engaged in illicit trade outside the country. But even with stronger laws and penalties, enforcement is a challenge.

Looters—locals, invaders, visitors—have been taking precious objects from Egypt since ancient times. Although many pieces left the country legally, the sheer quantity and significance of the pieces housed outside the country should shock us. The British Museum has been one of the strongest proponents of Egypt’s repatriation efforts and calls to shut down illegal trade. However, the museum itself has refused the return of some key objects, and it holds the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside of Egypt, largely amassed during Britain’s colonial era. The collection includes 100,000 pieces.

Several major museums across the Western world hold tens of thousands of pieces each, accumulating significant revenue for their display. Ultimately, if these institutions intend to keep and profit from these pieces, they should do so taking full account of how the pieces were obtained without glorifying colonial acquisition. Where possible, they should clarify to whom they actually belong.

In 2017, Vincent Geerling, chairman of the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art, argued that Egypt should reopen its legal market for antiquities to help finance protection of archeological sites. However, rather than Egypt selling off more of its priceless objects would be for the country to receive royalties from those pieces taken by colonizers or others who have profited off of the country’s cultural heritage.

Egypt and its archeological partners have unearthed countless new treasures in recent years. In 2017, workers uncovered a massive statue of Ramses II sunken in groundwater in a low-income area of Cairo, the great ruler’s polished body emerging from a mess of mud, water and stones. 2019 was a particularly significant year for archeological discoveries, with several ancient cemeteries and temples uncovered across the country. The repatriated artifacts and recent discoveries will have a new home worthy of their cultural value in the Grand Egyptian Museum, a massive $1 billion project sprawling on land adjacent to Giza’s Great Pyramids and set to open in 2021 after several years of delay. Beyond its mammoth size, this new institution will stand out for allowing Egypt to refute, once and for all, claims that it cannot properly care for pieces rightfully returning home.