Views: 10 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2019-09-27 Origin: BBCnews
US authorities have returned a stolen coffin to Egypt, two years after it was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
The 2,100-year-old coffin of a priest called Nedjemankh was featured in an exhibit housing artefacts from Egypt.
The stolen antique was sold to the museum by a global art trafficking network, which used fraudulent documents, officials said.
The gilded coffin was looted and smuggled out of Egypt in 2011.
"Thus far our investigation has determined that this coffin is just one of hundreds of antiquities stolen by the same multinational trafficking ring," Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said, quoted by Reuters news agency, at a repatriation ceremony in New York on Wednesday, adding that there could be more similar seizures.
The coffin, which dates back to the 1st Century BC, was bought by the prestigious museum for $4m (£3.2m) from a Parisian art dealer.
It was first shipped to Germany where it was restored before being transported to France.
