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Up:The banner of the auction - Down Left: Ancient Egyptian bronze cat - Down Right: an Egyptian painted pottery jar pre-dynastic period, NAQADA II |
The antiquities ministry objects
to the sale of artifacts owned
by the Toledo Museum of
Art at Christie's in New York.
Written By/ Nevine El-Aref.
The Egyptian antiquities
ministry is trying to prevent
the sale of Egyptian artifacts
by Toledo Museum of Art
at Christies in New York
next week.
To benefit its acquisitions fund,
the Ohio-based museum has
put up for auction a collection
of 64 works.
The sale is to be made in two
auctions; the first is from 19 to
26 October and will include
a selection of 24 pieces from
across ancient Greece, Rome,
the Near East, and Egypt with
highlights including a Cypriot
limestone head of a male votary
and an Egyptian bronze cat.
The second auction will be
from 21 to 24 October and will
be an online auction via
Christies, offering an
additional 40 pieces.
Upon the detection of the
auctions on the internet,
the ministry
has undertaken all legal,
legitimate and diplomatic
procedures to stop them taking
place and to recover the ancient
Egyptian artifacts, an official
told Ahram Online.
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An Egyptian faience wadjet eye finger ring, New Kingdom |
Supervisor-general of the
Antiquities Repatriation
Department
at the ministry, Shaaban Abdel
Gawad, told Ahram Online
that the ministry has contacted
the directors of UNESCO and
the International Committee
of Museums, as well as Egypt’s
Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
to cooperate with the Egyptian
embassy in the United States
to take all the procedures to
withdraw the Egyptian artifacts,
stop their sale and return them
to their country of origin.
The National Committee for
Antiquities Repatriation
led by Minister of Antiquities
Khaled El-Enany has met to
discuss the incident and
methods to stop the sale.
Abdel Gawad described the
sale of the Toledo Museum
of Art’s property as unacceptable
because it runs counter to the
original Enlightenment role
of museums as cultural
and archaeological institutions.
He went on to say that
the ministry has recently played
a major role in returning
stolen and illegally smuggled
antiquities. A total of 1,200
objects have been recovered
within the last seven months.
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