A piece of a more than 3,400-year-old statue of Pharaoh Ramses II that was taken from an Abydos temple decades ago was handed back to Egypt by Switzerland on Monday.
On Monday in Bern, Carine Bachmann, the head of the Federal Office of Culture (OFC), presented this “important archaeological asset” to the Egyptian embassy in Switzerland.
According to the OFC, the stone sculpture of Pharaoh Ramses II that the retrieved fragment is a portion of features the ruler sitting with several Egyptian gods.
Ramesses II, who succeeded his father Seti I as king at the age of 25, reigned Egypt for about 66 years, the longest reign in Egyptian history. He is currently the subject of a Paris show that runs through September 6th.
He said in a news release that the fragment that was returned on Monday had been taken from the Ramses II temple in Abydos, Egypt, between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s.
He travelled through several nations in transit before landing in Switzerland, where he was eventually seized by Geneva cantonal authorities after a criminal investigation.
“This restitution underlines the joint commitment of Switzerland and Egypt to combat the illicit trade in cultural property, reinforced in 2011 by the entry into force of a bilateral agreement on the import and return of cultural property” said the Federal Office of Culture.
The 1970 UNESCO Convention to Prohibit and Prevent the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property is ratified by both Switzerland and Egypt.
