Stolen Pharaonic paintings return to Egypt from the Louvre

Dec 22, 2009, 9:08 GMT

Cairo - Five ancient Egyptian paintings have returned to Cairo, Egypt's chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass announced Tuesday, after Paris' Louvre museum agreed to send them back.

The 3,500-year-old paintings, from the tomb of a nobleman near the southern Egyptian city of Luxor, were stolen some time after 1975 and were acquired by the Louvre in 2000 and 2003.

Archaeologists from Germany's Heidelberg University in January 2009 notified Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities that the stolen paintings were at the Louvre.

'I believe returning these artifacts to Egypt is a good example to show that any museum that buys stolen artifacts will have an immediate reaction against them,' Hawass said in a statement Tuesday.

'Any museum that buys stolen artifacts will receive this same treatment,' Hawass said.

Cairo had cut relations with the Louvre over the paintings, but French President Nicolas Sarkozy last week symbolically returned them to Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak in a ceremony in Paris.

The announcement came amid a dispute over a 3,300-year-old bust of the ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti now housed in Berlin's Neues Museum.

Hawass on Sunday said he would formally request the bust's return to Egypt this week.

Hawass said documents presented by Friederike Seyfried, the director of Berlin's Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection, proved the bust was taken from Egypt fraudulently.

Seyfried disputes that reading of the documents.

'The German position is clear and unequivocal,' she said. 'The acquisition of the bust by the Prussian state was lawful.'

Seyfried was in Cairo Sunday to discuss future cooperation, including shared exhibitions and an exchange programme for conservators, she said.

The Berlin museum has not ruled out the possibility of lending Nefertiti to Egypt for a fixed period, and is currently checking whether the 3,500-year-old bust is fit to travel.