The United States on Monday returned to Egyptian authorities the so-called Green Sarcophagus, the funerary coffin of an ancient Egyptian priest that had been illegally removed from the country.
The delivery took place in a ceremony held at the headquarters of the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs attended by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Samé Shukri, and the Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Ahmed Issa, reports the Egyptian news agency MENA.
The sarcophagus belonged to a priest of the city of Heracleopolis Magna named Ankh in Maat from the Late Period (664-332 BC). It is almost three meters long and is made of wood with decoration of columns and hieroglyphic texts with gilding. The portrait of the sarcophagus is painted in green, a color that symbolized resurrection in ancient Egypt.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office seized the sarcophagus after it was taken from the Abusir necropolis near Cairo and smuggled to the United States in 2008. There it was sold to a private collector and loaned in 2013 to the Houston Museum of Natural Science, from where it has been transferred back to Egypt after four years of research.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
