Metropolitan Museum returns artifact to Egypt
New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art will return to Egypt a fragment of an ancient pharaonic shrine it purchased from a collector.
The Supreme Council of Antiquities said that a piece of a red granite shrine, known as a “naos,” was purchased from an antiquities collector in New York last October so that it could be returned.
SCA head Zahi Hawass hailed the Met’s move as a “great deed,” singling it out as the first time a museum has bought an item for the sole purpose of repatriating it.
The fragment belongs to the naos honoring the 12th Dynasty King Amenemhat I, who ruled 4,000 years ago, which is now in the Ptah temple of Karnak in Luxor.
Thomas P. Campbell, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, commented: “The Metropolitan Museum is delighted to be able to assist in returning this granite fragment to its original home. Though the fragment is small, its return is a larger symbol of the Museum’s deep respect for the importance of protecting Egypt’s cultural heritage and the long history of warm relations the Museum enjoys with Egypt and the Supreme Council of Antiquities.”
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