Egyptian authorities have confirmed the arrest of a museum employee and three alleged accomplices after a priceless 3,000-year-old bracelet was stolen from Cairo’s Egyptian Museum, sold for less than $4,000, and then melted down beyond recovery.
The artifact, a gold band inlaid with lapis lazuli beads, dated back to the reign of Pharaoh Amenemope of the 21st Dynasty (1070–945 BC) and had been kept inside a locked safe in the museum’s conservation laboratory.
According to the Interior Ministry, the theft occurred on September 9 when a restoration specialist on duty removed the piece, later working with a silver trader in central Cairo who helped broker the sale. The bracelet was first sold to a gold dealer for 180,000 Egyptian pounds (around $3,735) before being passed to a worker at a gold foundry for 194,000 pounds ($4,025). Police reported that the ancient treasure was subsequently melted down with other scrap gold, permanently erasing an irreplaceable link to Egypt’s heritage.
The suspects have been taken into custody and confessed to the crime. Security camera footage released by the Interior Ministry showed a man exchanging cash and cutting a bracelet in two, though it remains unconfirmed whether the footage captured the stolen artifact itself. Reports suggest the bracelet’s disappearance was discovered during an inventory check ahead of the “Treasures of the Pharaohs” exhibition scheduled in Rome next month.
The piece had originally been unearthed in Tanis, in the Nile Delta, during excavations of King Psusennes I’s tomb, where Amenemope was reburied after his original resting place was looted. The theft has drawn outrage from Egyptologists, who stress the cultural loss inflicted by the destruction of such a rare artifact.
This incident also highlights a troubling pattern of high-profile cultural thefts in Egypt, including the repeated disappearance of Vincent van Gogh’s “Poppy Flowers,” valued at $55 million, which was stolen in 1977, recovered a decade later, stolen again in 2010, and still remains missing. Following Egypt’s 2011 revolution, museums and archaeological sites were widely plundered, with thousands of priceless artifacts smuggled abroad and sold into private collections, underscoring the ongoing vulnerability of the nation’s cultural treasures.
Africa Digital News, New York
