It was announced late on Wednesday that the missing limestone statue of Akhenaten holding an offering table stolen from the Egyptian Museum, has been found among garbage collected at Tahrir Square. It was found by a boy whose uncle was a professor at the University of Cairo.
This now means, as I feared yesterday that all the rubbish collected from Tahrir Square is now going to have to be searched to find out whether any more of the objects were cast there and collected up as the square was hurriedly cleared. The fact that such a valuable object was thrown away is suggesting even more strongly that the Museum break-in had not been the work of knowledgeable professionals, as it originally appeared, but trouble makers and vandals. No mention was made of the condition of the object when found. If the search for these objects now must be carried out throughout the streets all around Tahrir Square, it is even more imperative that photographs of all the items missing are made public immediately. Now the entire populace of this part of Cairo has to know what the objects everyone is searching for actually look like.
Egyptian volunteers clean up garbage and rocks from the street outside the Egyptian Museum near Tahrir Square (Photo: Daily Mail)
Kate Taylor, 'Stolen Egyptian Statute Is Found in Garbage', New York Times Feb 17, 2011.
Kate Taylor, 'Egypt’s Antiquities Minister Says Valuable Statue Found', New York Times Feb 17, 2011.
UPDATE 18/02/11: and what must be the most cringeworthy headline on the topic ever to be devised: New York Post's Mummy's daddy in 'garbage'