Assistant Foreign Minister for Cultural Relations Yasser Shaaban handed over 67 artifacts that Egypt recovered from Germany through its embassy in Berlin to a committee formed by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
This is part of Egypt's ongoing efforts to reclaim its antiquities from abroad, highlighting the commitment of the Egyptian state and its institutions to preserve the nation's heritage and cultural history.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, plays a crucial role in recovering Egyptian artifacts that have been smuggled overseas, working alongside Egypt's diplomatic and consular missions around the world.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Saturday 9/11/2024 that the restored artifacts include items from various periods of Egyptian history. Notable pieces are a mummified leg and foot, two masks, and two wall reliefs from a vizier tomb in Saqqara dating back to the 26th dynasty. Additionally, the recovered items feature a royal bronze statue, a collection of small ushabti statues—meant to perform tasks for the deceased in the afterlife according to ancient Egyptian beliefs—and bronze statues of Osiris, the Ancient Egyptian God of The Dead and The Underworld.
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The sole caretaker of the pyramids at Meroë, a former capital of the ancient Kingdom of Kush, is the only person standing between some of Sudan's greatest art treasures and rampaging armies accused of looting priceless antiquities from museums across the country.
In times of peace, Meroë, 200km north of Khartoum along the Nile, drew intrepid tourists to see the carvings and hieroglyphs housed in some of the 200 pyramids — more than in the whole of Egypt — which were constructed nearly 2,500 years ago. Nomads played zumbara flutes to visitors, who crossed the sand dunes of the Nubian Desert in camel caravans en route to nearby temples.
But since civil war broke out in April 2023, the archeological site has been deserted and Fozia Khalid, the sole caretaker, has been braced for its destruction.
"The militias are not far," said Khalid, a woman in her sixties, referring to troops from the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group that has taken over much of the country and left a trail of wreckage and alleged ethnic cleansing in its wake.
"Nobody has come here in over a year — all is dead here now," she said from what remains of a welcome centre built in 2018 using Qatari funding, at a time when hopes for tourism in the region were rising.
"I fear they may come and ravage centuries of history," Khalid said.
Ikhlas Abdel-Latif Ahmed, head of museums at Sudan's national antiquities authority, said that RSF soldiers had stolen artefacts from the recently renovated Sudan National Museum in the capital Khartoum in what she called "a major looting operation".
Many of the objects taken from the museum were loaded on to trucks and smuggled across the border into South Sudan, Ahmed said.
The RSF, which locals say has forces less than 20km from the pyramids, has taken over Khartoum and much of Darfur, forcing the official government to retreat 800km north-east to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast. RSF drones have been shot down on the way to Shendi, not far from Meroë. The RSF did not reply to requests for comment about the alleged looting.
The national museum was opened more than 50 years ago to house objects rescued from an area flooded by the construction of Egypt's Aswan dam. Among the 100,000 pieces it houses are those from the Palaeolithic, Meroë, Christian and Islamic eras, as well as artefacts, such as ushabti burial figurines of Kushite kings from Kerma, a capital in the north of Sudan that predated Meroë. The Kushite kingdom was known for its iron work.
"Unfortunately, all this has become a target of the war," Ahmed said.
Reports of looting have become so persistent that Unesco issued a statement in September warning that the "threat to [Sudan's] culture appears to have reached an unprecedented level".
The UN cultural body called on art market professionals and members of the public "to refrain from acquiring or taking part in the import, export or transfer of ownership of cultural property from Sudan". Its entreaty followed concerns that some of the antiquities may have ended up for sale online disguised as Egyptian artefacts.
"Any illegal sale or displacement of these cultural items would result in the disappearance of part of the Sudanese cultural identity and jeopardise the country's recovery," Unesco said.
The war in Sudan, which has killed an estimated 150,000 people and pushed 10mn into exile, now threatened the country's entire cultural heritage, said Zeinab Badawi, a Sudanese-British author of An African History of Africa and president of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
Much of Sudan's culture, long under-appreciated by what she called Egypt-centric scholars, could be lost forever, she said.
"It breaks my heart. I can hardly even think about it," Badawi added. "Today Sudan is a country that's synonymous with conflict, but in the ancient world it was the centre of an amazing civilisation."
Sudan was home to some of Africa's earliest human settlements, dating back to as early as 8,000BC, by which time it was already producing "exquisitely decorated" pottery, Badawi said. By 2,500BC, the Kingdom of Kush was established at Kerma, present-day Karima, in northern Sudan. The Kushites even ruled Egypt for more than a century after conquering it in the eighth century BC, she said.
Reports of widespread looting of artefacts, including at a museum in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, and damage to the Museum of the House of the Caliph Abdullah Al-Taayshi in Omdurman, recalls the wholesale theft of artefacts during recent wars in Iraq, Syria and Mali.
The Iraq Museum in Baghdad was looted after the 2003 US invasion. Although a 4,000-year-old statue of Sumerian king Entemena was later returned to the museum, many stolen pieces remain missing. The museum only reopened in 2015.
In 2016, Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, an Islamist militant, became the first person to be tried for the war crime of destroying antiquities when he was sentenced to nine years in prison by the International Criminal Court for demolishing historic monuments in Timbuktu, Mali.
Meroë itself has a history of both looting, and being looted. In 1834, the tops of dozens of pyramids at the site were blown up by Italian treasure hunter Giuseppe Ferlini.
The British Museum in London, much of whose collection was derived from plunder, includes the Meroë Head, a large bronze head depicting the first Roman emperor Augustus, which was taken in 1910 from Meroë where it ended up after being looted from Roman Egypt in 24BC.
Amani Gashi, an archaeologist and co-ordinator of cultural protection initiative Safeguarding Sudan's Living Heritage Against Conflict and Climate Change, said none of the country's treasures was safe. That included the Temple of Amun at Jebel Barkal in Karima, as well as the lion-headed god Apedemak in Naqa and the elephant carving at the temple at Musawwarat, near Meroë.
"All the objects that have been stolen are unique pieces," Gashi said. "All the archeological sites are now at risk due to the war."
When the Egyptian government under President Nasser decided to build the High Dam at Aswan in the 1950s, flooding lower Nubia and its archaeological sites, Unesco initiated an international campaign to save and relocate its monuments, including the temples of Abu Simbel and Philae, and the huge fortress of Buhen, just within Sudan.
The excavation of Buhen, which began in 1957, was the UK's major contribution to the campaign, funded by the Egypt Exploration Society, and directed by Bryan Emery, professor of Egyptology at University College London. Harry Smith, then a young Cambridge lecturer, joined the team in 1959, working at Buhen and other sites in Nubia until 1965.
Smith, who has died aged 96, went on to become one of the leading British Egyptologists of his generation, with the broadest range in philology, archaeology and history.
As a result of his work in Nubia, he produced a series of pioneering studies (1966-94) that began the process of reassessingthe significance of early societies in Nubia and Sudan, and their development independent of Egypt.
He challenged the racist interpretations of earlier archaeologists, who claimed that prehistoric and early Nubian cultures were the product of population movements from the north and declined because of movements of so-called negro populations from the south.
A bull from the excavations in the Sacred Animal Necropolis at Saqqara. Photograph: Paul T Nicholson
Smith had first worked with Emery in Egypt at Saqqara, the vast cemetery of ancient Memphis, south of modern Cairo, as a graduate in 1953, rejoining him there in 1964 after being appointed reader in Egyptology at UCL.
When Emery retired in 1970, Smith took over his post as professor. Then, after Emery's sudden death the following year, Smith continued his work at Saqqara. The excavation's focus was the Sacred Animal Necropolis, miles of underground galleries containing millions of mummified animals in jars: from the shrew to the ibis to the baboon. Notable was the burial place of the sacred cows, the mothers of the living representative of the bull god, Apis, kept in the temple. Later, in 1982, he initiated a survey of Memphis with his former students David Jeffreys and Lisa Giddy, recording the remains of the principal city of Egypt for much of its ancient history.
Born in London, Harry grew up surrounded by archaeologists and antiquities. He was the son of Sidney Smith, keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities at the British Museum from 1931, and Mary (nee Parker), an artist who trained at the Slade School. Their closest friends were the archaeologist Max Mallowan and his wife, the crime writer Agatha Christie. Consequently, Harry, with his parents and younger sister, Zoë, spent many holidays at Christie's house, Greenway, in Devon. Christie later dedicated her 1965 novel, At Bertram's Hotel, to Harry, "because I appreciate the scientific way he reads my books".
He went to Merchant Taylors' school near Northwood, Hertfordshire, before winning a scholarship to study classics at Cambridge. Having completed national service, he took up his place at Christ's College, having switched to oriental studies (Egyptian, Coptic and Arabic).
Following his first season in Saqqara he was appointed assistant lecturer and research fellow at Christ's College (1954-63), where he began studying Demotic, an ancient Egyptian language. Although a fine philologist, Smith also wanted to be involved in fieldwork, so in 1959 went to Turkey and Iraq (Nimrud) to train in settlement archaeology, before arriving at Buhen.
In 1961, he married Hazel Flory Leeper, an administrator at Christ's College. She was the photographer for Smith's work in Nubia and at Saqqara, and ran the dig house at Saqqara with great efficiency. The couple made a home in Dulwich, south London, then, from the mid-70s, in Upwood, near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.
The fortress of Buhen, 1961
One of Smith's duties at UCL was overseeing the collection of 78,000 objects formed by Sir Flinders Petrie, ranging from the Palaeolithic to Islamic period. Smith and Barbara Adams, the curator, were deeply concerned about the fabric of the building holding the collection, and access to it for the public. After a fundraising campaign in 1986-87, Adams and Smith, with others, founded the Friends of the Petrie Museum in 1988. Smith was its president until 2021.
He retired as professor, and from excavation, in 1988, but continued to teach until 1994. He was inspiring and caring, greatly loved and respected by his students.
A tallish, spare figure, Smith was inclined to clumsiness, which led him to fall down holes and knock things over: not ideal in an archaeologist but endearing to many.
He served for many years on the committees of the Egypt Exploration Society (of which he was elected vice-president in 1994) and the Sudan Archaeological Research Society. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1985.
Throughout his career, Smith published a considerable number of volumes and academic papers. The earlier years of his "retirement" were spent completing five volumes on the Sacred Animal Necropolis, with his friend and former student Sue Davies.
Hazel died in 1991. Smith is survived by two nephews.
The South Asasif Conservation Project is very grateful to the Ministry of Antiquities and Dr. Mohamed Ismail Khaled, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities for their support of the work of the Project and their announcement of our recent discovery.
Middle Kingdom Burials of the South Asasif Necropolis
Dr. Elena Pischikova, Director, South Asasif Conservation Project
The Egyptian-American mission South Asasif Conservation Project, working under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, has discovered a Middle Kingdom tomb with several intact burials while clearing the south side of the superstructure of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty tomb of Karabasken (TT 391) in 2023-24. This is the first Middle Kingdom tomb found in the area. It was cleared by the field team of the Project under the supervision of Marion Brew.
Among the finds are beautiful necklaces, bracelets, armlets, scarab rings and girdles made of amethyst, carnelian, garnet, blue-green glazed faience, and feldspar. The amulets incorporated into the jewelry include hippo heads, hawks, ba amulets, wedjat eyes, Taweret amulets, and a snake head, among others.
A necklace of 30 amethyst barrel beads with an amazonite ba amulet in the center, and a girdle of carnelian ball beads connected by double strings of blue faience ring beads are some of the most exquisite pieces among the found jewelry.
The burials were significantly damaged by floods, which destroyed the wood of the coffins and the linen wrappings. Various contents of the burials that were made of less perishable materials are well preserved and were found in situ among the skeletal remains of the bodies. This particular situation allowed the team of Dr. Afaf Wahba, Dr. Katherine Blakeney and conservator Ali Hassan Ibrahim to trace the original positions of strings of beads caked in the dried flood mud around the bones, and reconstruct the closest possible arrangement to the authentic stringing.
Two burials also contained copper or copper alloy mirrors with elegantly carved ivory handles. One of the mirrors was found with a lotiform handle, while the second displays the rather rare design of a four-faced Hathor presenting her as a woman with austere features.
Another important find is a green-blue glazed faience fertility figurine with truncated legs. It is well-modelled and decorated with a variety of jewelry and lozenge markings on the legs and torso. Her cropped hair is painted black. The head is pierced with holes arranged in three sections. The holes were intended for the attachment of "hair". Almost 4000 mud beads found next to the figurine constituted her original hair.
An offering tray associated with the burials is of a square shape with a low border and a water channel in the middle surrounded with relief representations of a bull's head, ribs, leg, loaf of bread and other offerings.
In total, eleven burials were discovered in SACP 40. Most of the bodies were placed side-by-side in wooden coffins oriented north to south with their heads facing in either direction. Dr. Afaf Wahba identified the skeletons of five women, two men and three children. Burial assemblages were found in burials 2, 4, 6, 8, 9 and 10. Most of the jewelry was found in female burials. The children and one of the men did not have any burial goods. Therefore, an imposing necklace found on the man from Burial 9 is of special interest. It consists of 40 faience ball beads separated by single faience cylinder beads with two cylinder carnelian beads flanking a hippo head amulet on the back.
The typology of some of the found objects allows to date the original burials to the early 12th Dynasty. This family tomb must have been used for several generations through the 12th and beginning of the 13th Dynasties.
The unearthing of the first Middle Kingdom tomb in the South Asasif necropolis alters its history, placing South Asasif within the sprawling Theban Middle Kingdom necropolis.
This significant discovery contributes to our understanding of the burial practices and rituals of the Theban necropolis in the Middle Kingdom as well as presenting a beautiful collection of exquisitely crafted jewelry well preserved in situ.
Further exploration of the Middle Kingdom burials in the South Asasif necropolis will significantly advance our ongoing research on Middle Kingdom influences on the art and funerary rituals of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty.
The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California chapter, and the UC Berkeley Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures invite you to attend a lecture by Leah Packard-Grams, UC Berkeley:
