Egyptian delegation in Paris to retrieve two 4,200-year-old murals smuggled in 2001

Two murals dating back to the sixth dynasty of ancient Egypt (2,345-2,181BC) were retrieved on Monday in Paris by an Egyptian delegation after being stolen from an excavation site in Cairo in 2001, a statement from the country’s prosecutor general Hamada El Sawy said.

Mr El Sawy is heading the delegation currently in Paris to repatriate the decorated stone slabs.

The murals, both of which are cream-coloured and decorated with hieroglyphics, date back about 4,200 years and were discovered in 2001 by a French archaeological mission excavating in the Saqqara necropolis.

The mission, led by renowned Egyptologist Vassil Dobrev, unearthed the tomb of a sixth dynasty priest in an area where a number of other priest tombs were also unearthed. The mission ended their work in 2001 and went on holiday, only to return in 2002 to find that the two murals, which they had left inside the tomb, had been expertly removed and smuggled out.

Ten years later, Mr Dobrev was visiting a museum in Budapest when he found the murals on exhibit. He later saw more of the tomb’s contents on sale at a Paris auction house, which prompted him to notify the Egyptian authorities.

The theft of the murals has been under investigation for decades. It has recently been linked to a series of relic robberies from Egyptian archaeological sites by an organised group of smugglers who employ “strict methods” to extract artefacts out of Egypt and forge whatever documents are necessary, the prosecutor general said.

Investigations revealed that one of the main suspects in the theft of the murals was a renowned antiquities dealer based in Paris who claimed to have bought them from someone in Switzerland. His claims were found to be untrue after investigators determined that the documents he was using to prove the sale were forged.

The suspects will undergo due legal process in France.

It is believed that the network of robbers which extracted the murals is the same as that involved in another case of smuggling, for which ex-Louvre chief Jean-Luc Martinez was last year charged for conspiring to hide the origins of artefacts taken out of Egypt. The artefacts were removed from the country in a period of turmoil during the 2011 Arab Uprisings.

The area is known as one of the few burial sites in Egypt with relics dating back to the Old Kingdom.

Law enforcement teams from the two countries have been co-operating to curb artefact smuggling out of Egypt, which to this day remains rampant.