Pharaoh gets his eye back

Herald Sun

SWITZERLAND is to return a pharaoh's "eye" stolen 36 years ago from the ancient Egyptian statue of King Amenhotep III.

"The eye is around 50cm long and was stolen from Amenhotep III's statue, which was discovered in 1970 in his Luxor temple," Egypt's culture minister Faruk Hosni said.

The eye was stolen in 1972 when a fire broke out around the temple.

"The thieves sold it to an American antiquities dealer who then auctioned it at Sotheby's," he said.

There, the eye was bought by a German antiquities dealer before ending up in a museum in Basel, Switzerland.