3,400-Year-old Head of King Ramses II Statue Returned to Egypt After Theft

A statue fragment of the great pharaoh Ramses II has been recovered in a joint effort and repatriated to Egypt.

Carved 3,400 years ago, it was stolen from the Temple of Ramses in the southern Egyptian site of Abydos over 30 years ago.

Shaaban Abdel Gawad, who heads Egypt’s antiquities repatriation agency, said the piece is estimated to have been stolen in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

It is now in the possession of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in Cairo where it’s being restored.

The story of its recovery involved eagle eyes trained on the antiquities and art markets in Europe, where suddenly the statue fragment appeared on auction in London 10 years ago before being transferred to Switzerland.

“This head is part of a group of statues depicting King Ramses II seated alongside a number of Egyptian deities,” Gawad told Reuters. 

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Working alongside Swiss officials, Gawad and his colleagues were able to establish rightful ownership, and the artifact was seized for transfer to Cairo.

Perhaps no other nation has had to recover more artifacts from plunderers and illegal traders than Egypt, but they’ve become quite adept at it over the decades.

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In a time when men lived to be 40 years old, Ramses II, aka the ‘Ozymandius’ of Percy Shelly’s poem, ruled for 40 years until his death at 91. It’s believed he sired nearly 100 children—and outlived almost all of them as well as many of his grandchildren.

Temples, cities, and statues were constructed across the realm in his honor as he extended the borders from as far south as Nubia, to as far north as Canaan and Phoenicia.

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