Marking the long-awaited opening earlier this month of the Great Egyptian Museum, the world’s largest dedicated to ancient Egypt, some of the attendees who attended the opening arrived with gifts under their arms for their guests. Danish Foreign Minister Lars Rasmussen landed with a model of the Great Pyramid of Giza by LEGO, a Danish company. And the prime minister of the Netherlands, Dick Schoof, took the opportunity to announce the return of an ancient Egyptian sculpture that had been stolen and transported to his country.
The statue in question, which represents a high official from the dynasty of Pharaoh Thutmose III and is approximately 3,500 years old, was intercepted in 2022 at a fair in Maastricht following an anonymous complaint about the illegal origin of the object, looted and exported from Egypt, according to the Dutch Information and Heritage Inspectorate. Valued at 190,000 euros, the sculpture was put up for sale by a dealer arrested in Barcelona in 2024.
The announcement of their return came at a time when calls for the repatriation of ancient Egyptian objects are gaining strength following the opening of the Great Egyptian Museum. The site is home to more than 100,000 pieces, including Tutankhamun’s iconic golden burial mask, two colossal burial ships of Khufu, and an impressive 80-ton statue of Ramesses II. But some of the most illustrious objects from the country of the pharaohs will not yet be able to be exhibited because they will remain on display in Western museums.
A long list of empires have passed through Egypt, and its relics have circulated around the world for centuries. But it was following the French occupation at the beginning of the 19th century and then that of the United Kingdom that the so-called Egyptomaniaa period of renewed interest in ancient Egypt, especially in Europe, accompanied by great discoveries and an unprecedented extraction of hundreds of thousands of objects exhibited today in many museums in the North of the world.
“People are very enthusiastic about their past and (the authorities) can’t keep up with it; the people are more on the front line than the institutions,” says archaeologist Monica Hanna, one of the most active voices in Egypt calling for the repatriation of objects abroad. “People say it once again: it’s time for Egypt to start a real conversation about repatriation,” he added, “the postcolonial discourse must end.”
From London to Boston
One of the most claimed objects in Egypt is the Rosetta Stone, a stele fragment with a decree issued during the time of Pharaoh Ptolemy V inscribed in three languages – hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek – which allowed the Frenchman Jean-François Champollion to decipher ancient Egyptian writing in 1822. The piece was discovered in 1799 during Napoleon’s military campaign in Egypt, then under Ottoman occupation, and was handed over to the English to whom they ended up capitulating. Today it is in the British Museum.
Another illustrious object that cannot be displayed in the Grand Egyptian Museum is the Dendera Zodiac, a bas-relief featuring the best-preserved star map of the ancient world. The work, believed to have been commissioned in the time of Cleopatra, was blown out of her temple during the French expedition to Egypt and is today in the Louvre in Paris, near the Place de la Concorde where the second Luxor-era obelisk stands.
A third emblematic piece also outside Egypt is the bust of Nefertiti, currently exhibited with particular solemnity in a room of the Neues Museum in Berlin. The object was discovered in 1912 by a German archaeologist in Amarna, Egypt’s former capital under Pharaoh Akhenaten in the center of the country, and Egyptian authorities have made intermittent efforts for more than a century to repatriate it, but to date have been unsuccessful.
Other unique pieces from the era that will remain far from the land of the pharaohs for now include the Tarkhan linen dress, the oldest woven women’s garment in the world, made around 5,000 years ago and exhibited in London. Also the bust of Anjaf, in Boston, valuable as a very unusual realistic representation of a former prince and vizier.
Renewed momentum
Coinciding with the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum, a campaign to collect signatures calling for the repatriation of the Rosetta Stone, the Dendera Zodiac and the Nefertiti bust, initially launched in recent years, has once again gone viral in Egypt and by mid-November had overall reached almost half a million signatures.
“The petition is not intended to be an official campaign but rather a popular initiative created for people from all over the world to show their support for the return of these objects,” says director and content creator Fadi Victor, who promoted the campaign together with the famous Egyptologist Zahi Hawass. “We believe that global public support can play an important role in strengthening Egypt’s legitimate demand for their return,” he confides.
Another imaginative proposal that has been circulating on social networks and some Egyptian media amid these renewed calls to repatriate objects to the country proposes dedicating a room in the Grand Egyptian Museum to display, using three-dimensional holograms, the most famous pieces currently found abroad with information on their history and location.
Victor notes that the inauguration of the new museum was “the perfect moment” to reactivate these initiatives, as it served to “reignite public enthusiasm and national pride”. “This monumental achievement attracted all eyes to Egypt and made Egyptians even more aware and proud of their heritage,” he emphasizes.
The director also believes that the museum’s presentation to the world buries the racist argument that Egyptian objects are safer and better preserved abroad. “The Great Egyptian Museum is the perfect answer: a declaration that Egypt is opening a new chapter in history, capable of preserving, protecting and exhibiting its treasures in one of the most modern and advanced museum environments on the planet,” he emphasizes.
