A 3,000-year-old gold bracelet that disappeared from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo was stolen and melted down, Egypt’s inside ministry says.
A restoration specialist took the artefact – which dates again to the reign of King Amenemope, a pharaoh who dominated Egypt round 1,000BC – from a protected on the museum 9 days in the past, in response to the ministry.
The lady contacted a silver jeweller she knew, who offered the bracelet to a gold jeweller for $3,735 (£2,750), it stated. He then offered it for $4,025 to a gold foundry employee, who had melted it down with different jewelry, it added.
The ministry stated the 4 people confessed to their crimes after being arrested and that the cash was seized.
On Tuesday, Egypt’s tourism and antiquities ministry introduced that it had taken quick measures after the bracelet disappeared from the Egyptian Museum’s restoration laboratory, and that the case had been referred to police.
A picture of the gold band adorned with spherical lapis lazuli beads had been circulated to all Egyptian airports, seaports and land border crossings as a precaution to stop it being smuggled overseas, it stated.
Native media reported that the disappearance was detected in latest days as museum employees have been getting ready to ship dozens of artefacts to Rome for an exhibition.
The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is the oldest archaeological museum within the Center East. It homes greater than 170,000 artefacts, together with Amenemope’s gilded wood funerary masks.
The bracelet’s theft got here weeks earlier than the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in close by Giza, the place the well-known treasures of King Tutankhamun’s tomb have been transferred.
