Mereja

More re repatriation conference

Written by

Serkadis

in

Egypt State Information Service

I’ve trawled through the various media reports on the subject of the conference and it is a real shame that we only hear the Egyptian point of view in any of the reports. Obviously Hawass took centre stage because it was an Egyptian-organized conference held in Egypt, but it would have been interesting to hear something from the many other voices that attended, representing other countries and other problems.

Secretary-General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawwas, on Wednesday 7/4/2010 urged all countries of ancient civilizations to work on stopping theft of antiquities.

In his speech at an international conference on restoring stolen antiquities that opened in Cairo Wednesday Hawwas added that Egypt managed to restore more than 5,000 stolen artifacts over the past years.

The conference is attended by 16 countries that have ancient civilizations from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America.

An exhibition was opened Wednesday evening at the Egyptian Museum showing artifacts that Egypt had successfully reclaimed from aboard over the past seven years.

Hawwas opened a hall at the Egyptian Museum to showcase the antiquities.

The exhibit, held on the sidelines of an international conference on restoring stolen antiquities that opened in Cairo earlier in the day, displays eleven monuments.

The colossal limestone bust of Amenhotep III was returned from London and the statue of Priest of the god Montu was also returned from the Netherlands.

Moreover, the statue of Nefer-Renpet was retrieved from Germany and three pots from Switzerland.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

More posts