Stolen Egyptian artifacts recovered
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The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that it has recovered seven of the eight ancient Egyptian artifacts that were stolen from the Bijbels Museum in Amsterdam in the middle of the afternoon on July 29, 2007. The Art Loss Register found them at a Manhattan auction house (one of the big two — Christie’s and Sotheby’s) when it perused sale-catalogue galleys circulated to ALR (the usual practice). It called Customs, which had been asked by the Dutch police to help.
Among the works recovered were:
* a mummiform shawabti figure (1307-1070 B.C.), seven inches in height, whose hands crossed over its chest hold tools;
* a bronze seated sculpture of Imhotep (ca. 712 B.C.), architect of the Step Pyramid;
* a statuette of Harpokrates (ca. 712 B.C.), an image of the falcon god Horus as a child;
* a painted wooden figure of Osiris (ca. 712 B.C.), the Egyptian deity of the underworld; and
* three scarabs (unreleased dates) representing sacred dung beetles.
Still missing from the Dutch theft is the Shawabti of Ptah-Irdisu (1300-1200 B.C.).
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