Back in Cairo - stolen Ramses hair offered for internet sale

Apr 10, 2007, 13:39 GMT

Cairo - Egypt's antiquities authority said Tuesday it was pleased to announce that hair belonging to Pharaoh Ramses II had returned to Cairo after being offered for sale on the internet by a Frenchman.

An employee at the Egyptian Museum, where Ramses II's mummy (1279- 1213 BC) is on display, said the short strand of hair would not be reattached to the mummy's head, but shown separately in the museum.

It was luck that the French postman had offered it for sale on the internet, he said, adding: 'If he had sold it privately, we might never have found out.'

The case of the pharaoh's hair caused considerable upset last November, when 50-year-old Jean-Michel Diebolt attempted to sell it for 2,000 euros.

Egyptian authorities complained to Paris, and Diebolt was temporarily arrested.

Diebolt had received the hair as well as several small fragments of the Pharaoh's shroud from his father, who in the 1970s worked in a Grenoble laboratory where fragments of the mummy were examined in 1976.

The fragments detached when the run-down mummy was being irradiated for fungal decay. Diebolt later apologized to the Egyptian government.

Ramses II was one of the most important ancient Egyptian kings. He reached an age of around 90, had a large number of descendants and ordered the construction of dozens of temples, colossal statues and obelisks.

Cultural Minister Farouk Hosny said the hair, which an Egyptian official picked up from France last week, was only one of many examples of antiquities whose theft had never been made public.

Only recently, several items had been discovered which had been stolen 30 years ago from a storage depot of an archaeological dig in Saqqara. The items had never been recorded stolen, Hosny said.