Egypt gets 3000-year-old statue back from Dutch

GMA News

Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities says it has retrieved from the Netherlands a small pharaonic funerary statue — over 3,000 years old and known as an ushebti — dating back to the 19th Dynasty.

The Council says in a statement Monday that the statue was found in 1985 by Dutch and British archaeologists in Saqqara, but was stolen from a nearby storehouse.

A Dutch businessman later bought it and took it to a museum in the city of Leiden to confirm its value. There, he was told the statue was stolen. Dutch authorities ruled to hand it back to Egypt.

The faience statue is 85 millimeters, or 3.35 inches high, with hieroglyphic inscriptions. Ushebtis are figurines, dozens of which were sometimes buried in a tomb to help the dead in the afterlife.

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