Man arrested in Egypt for mummy smuggling
An Australian teacher who stuffed his luggage with 2,000-year old animal mummies and religious figurines wrapped as gifts was arrested Wednesday, an Egyptian airport security official said. The 61-year teacher was heading to Thailand when a security official became suspicious of the wrapped figurines that were placed amid souvenir ceramic pots in his suitcase.
When security officials opened the case, they found two mummies of a cat and an ibis, a long-beaked bird, both dating back to 300 B.C. The confiscated collection also included 19 figurines of the revered ancient Egyptian gods of Horus and Thoth, wrapped as gifts.
The man was arrested and has been charged with smuggling antiquities, which can carry a penalty of as much as 15 years. An antiquity official at the airport described the bust as rare because of the number of items involved and the age of the items.
Meanwhile, another unlucky traveler in Cairo’s airport was stopped Wednesday with 56 cartridges, 20 pieces of live ammunition and an old bayonet that dates back to World War II. He told the authorities he picked up the ammunition in the Egyptian north coast town El Alamein, the site of one of the most decisive battles in World War II. The Canadian passenger, who was heading to Switzerland and was let free, said he was unaware transporting the ammunition would be illegal.
Exhibition: Egypt – Back to the Source
10 Oct. 2008 – 8 Feb. 2009
Glypkotek, Copenhagen, Denmark
Around 1890, the brewing magnate, Carl Jacobsen, founder of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, engaged Denmark’s leading Egyptologist, Valdemar Schmidt, to create an Egyptian collection in the newly-planned museum, and in the course of the following 35 years, Schmidt succeeded in putting together a collection of ancient Egyptian art matching Jacobsen’s other excellent collections of ancient art, from Greece, Etruria and the Roman Empire.
This exhibition is an opportunity to see the works which Schmidt brought back to Denmark from his extensive travels in Egypt. Other works on display come from excavations in that country which Schmidt persuaded the wealthy Jacobsen to sponsor.
Today it would be quite impossible to create a comparable collection, but Schmidt and Jacobsen lived in an age when the Egyptian authorities still permitted a limited, controlled export of antiquities. As a result, the Glyptotek today can present an Egyptian collection of truly international standing.
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is an art museum of international stature in the center of Copenhagen. It houses over 10.000 works of art divided up into two principal collections: Mediterranean cradle of Western culture and Danish and French art from the 19th and 20th centuries.
