Egypt to retrieve ushabti from Netherlands
A precious 4,000 year old ushabti from the 19th Dynasty will finally return to Egypt. The artifact, discovered in Saqqara in 1985, stolen and then auctioned, was identified by experts at a museum in Lyden, the Netherlands, after it was presented to them by an amateur collector who had bought the item without knowledge of its provenance.
Dutch authorities delivered the ushabti to representatives of the Egyptian government.
Ushabtis are small mummy-form figurines, complete with hieroglyphs meant to represent the deceased and to act as his substitute when required by the gods to perform manual labor in the afterlife. The wealthier the deceased was, the more ushabtis were placed in his tomb. Its size and numbers make them an easy target for smugglers to illegally export from Egypt.
-
-
Translator
By N2H
