SCA accidentally gets back stolen antiquities

Egypt Daily Star News (Nigel J. Hetherington)

An issue we saw gain momentum in 2007 has swung back on the agenda once again almost as the new year came in. This is the issue of the repatriation or return of Egypt’s cultural heritage from the museum stores of Europe and the Americas.

In the last few weeks, the University Museum at Southern Illinois University in the United States agreed to return a statue of a cat dating from the Ptolemaic era that had been illegally smuggled out of the country.

In an ironic twist to the story the location of the cat only came about because the museum’s current director Dona Bachman, sent a letter to the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) asking for approval to exhibit the artefact as part of the museum’s collection, and requesting more details about the object and the archaeological site where it was originally found. It was then that Dr Zahi Hawass, Director General of the SCA, spotted that the cat was on a list of items stolen from Egypt.

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