FBI Returns 48 Smuggled Ancient Artefacts to Egypt

Forty-eight Egyptian artefacts, some dating back to the Pharaonic period, are being returned from the US after an FBI investigation concluded they had been illicitly trafficked out of Egypt.

The collection was formally handed to Egyptian representatives in Los Angeles on Friday. It includes carved figures, amulets and funerary objects spanning the Pharaonic, Roman and Coptic periods — pieces that had travelled considerably further than their makers could have imagined.

Their route home began unusually. According to the FBI, the objects’ most recent possessor contacted authorities after researching their provenance and becoming concerned about how they had entered the US. Investigators from the FBI’s Art Crime Team subsequently found no record showing the 48 pieces had ever been legally removed from Egypt. The suspected original trafficker has since died.

Egypt’s consul general in Los Angeles, Hossam Eldeen Aly, described the objects as “an integral part of the history and cultural heritage of Egypt and its people”.

The handover is the latest in a much larger stream of restitutions. US law enforcement has returned more than 5,000 cultural objects to Egypt over the past decade, while a bilateral agreement introduced in 2016 restricts American imports of designated Egyptian archaeological material.