The Ministry added in a statement that upon receipt of this piece, it was deposited in the warehouses of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in preparation for the necessary maintenance and restoration work before displaying it.
The head of the statue was stolen from the Temple of Ramesses II in the ancient city of Abydos in southern Egypt more than three decades ago. The exact date of the theft is not known, but Shaaban Abdel Jawad, Director General of the General Administration for the Recovery of Antiquities and Supervisor of the Central Administration for Archaeological Ports, said that estimates indicate that the piece was stolen in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
The Ministry of Antiquities said that the Egyptian authorities spotted the artifact while it was being offered for sale in a showroom in the British capital, London, in 2013, and then it moved between several countries until it reached Switzerland.
Abdel-Gawad said, “This head is part of a group statue depicting King Ramesses II sitting next to a number of Egyptian gods.”
Egypt, in cooperation with the Swiss authorities, succeeded in proving Egypt's right to this piece and that it left Egypt illegally. Switzerland handed over the piece to the Egyptian embassy in Bern last year, but it did not arrive in Egypt until recently.
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