Cyprus-Forum.com

[Lit]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... ZMltxw9DAg

France to return stolen relics to Egypt

By Pascale Mollard-Chenebenoit (AFP) – 6 hours ago

PARIS — France decided Friday to return to Egypt five relics stolen from Luxor's Valley of the Kings and sold to the Louvre, two days after Cairo severed ties with the Paris museum in protest.

Cario's antiquities chief said the country will restore ties with the Louvre once France has fulfilled the pledge to return the relics to Egypt.

A special commission of the French museums agency decided unanimously to hand over the five painted wall fragments after ruling that they were indeed stolen in the 1980s before ending up at the Louvre in 2000 and 2003.

"Restitution is now just a matter of weeks," said a culture ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Egypt on Wednesday cut off relations with the Louvre to press demands that the Paris museum return the artefacts.

"We will not restore ties with the Louvre until the relics are back in Egypt," antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told AFP in Cairo after the announcement.

The French government has said the Louvre acted in good faith when it purchased the relics and that doubts were only raised in November after archaeologists discovered the tomb and the missing fragments.

But Hawass had said that he believed the Paris museum bought the antiquities even though its curators knew they were stolen.

"The purchase of stolen steles is a sign that some museums are prepared to encourage the destruction and theft of Egyptian antiquities," he said.

The five small relics were chipped away from the wall painting of an ancient Egyptian tomb dating back to the 18th dynasty and are currently in storage at the Louvre.

Museum curators purchased four of the five fragments in 2000 from the collection of French archeologist Gaston Maspero and a fifth piece was bought in 2003 during a public sale at the Drouot auction house.

Louvre director Henri Loyrette said he would be in contact with Egyptian authorities to quickly set a date for the return of the frescoes and stressed there should be no hurdle in the way of restoring ties with Cairo.

"We are happy to be able to contribute to the return of these works that should never have left their original setting to begin with," said Loyrette.

Egypt's decision to suspend cooperation put a hold on conferences organised with the museum, as well as work carried out by the Louvre on the Pharaonic necropolis of Saqqara, south of the capital Cairo.

But within hours of Cairo's announcement, Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand declared that France was ready to return the antiquities if they were indeed stolen.

The minister asked the special commission to quickly rule on whether there was theft and said he would be ready to act on restitution "without delay" once a decision had been rendered.

The row over the Pharaonic antiquities came just weeks after Egyptian Culture Minister Faruq Hosni complained bitterly over his defeat in the race to become the new director of the UN culture agency UNESCO, which is Paris-based.

Egyptian officials however denied there was a link between the UNESCO row and the decision to take action against the Louvre.

In recent years Egyptian authorities have been increasingly vociferous in campaigning for the return of important works that enrich the collections of such top museums as the Louvre and London's British Museum.

In 2007, France returned hairs from an ancient pharaoh that were nearly sold on the Internet by a French postal worker whose father had acquired them during the scientific examination of the royal mummy 30 years previously.

The case prompted Egyptian authorities to bar foreign scientists from examining royal mummies.

Egypt has also long demanded the return from Berlin of a bust of the legendary Queen Nefertiti that was discovered on the banks of the Nile by German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt in December 1912.

The case mirrors that of the so-called Elgin Marbles, the decorative frieze that used to adorn the Parthenon in Athens whose return by the British Museum in London Greece has long demanded.

[Lit]

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/ ... mural.html

France repatriates tomb mural to Egypt

France will return five sections of a mural from an Egyptian tomb that had been on exhibit at Paris's Louvre museum, ending a cultural standoff between the two countries.

French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand announced Friday that the museum's committee recommended the mural pieces be returned. They will be sent back to Egypt immediately, Mitterrand said.

Egypt had been asking for their return ever since a tomb from which the mural sections were believed to have been pillaged was unearthed in 2008.

The country's Supreme Council for Antiquities said Wednesday it would suspend co-operation with the Louvre until the issue was resolved.

Egypt's antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass, had accused Louvre officials of knowing the pieces were illegally exported when they purchased them.

According to Mitterrand, the mural fragments were acquired in good faith by the museum between 2000 and 2003.

The threatened actions by Egyptian officials would have stopped work on an archeological dig by the Louvre on the necropolis of Saqqara, south of the capital, Cairo.