“At the end of 10 years of investigation and procedure, it is truly doing a work of justice to render an element diverted to its heritage to your country of origin“Said Julien Moinil, a prosecutor of the King of Brussels, in a press release.
The prosecution said that the artifact, as well as a piece of an old wooden beard, were given to the Egyptian ambassador during a ceremony in the Belgian capital.
These antiques had been seized by Belgian police in 2015 after Interpol issued an opinion on them following a request from a court in Egypt, the prosecution said.
During the time of the procedure, they were kept at the Royal Museum of Art and History in Brussels.
The wooden sarcophagus, which dates from the ptolemaic era (4th-iiie s. Before JC), “undoubtedly belonged to a member of Egyptian high society“, Records the prosecution in its press release.
“The choice of materials and the meticulous execution bear witness to exceptional know-how“He continues.
He finally specifies that the hieroglyphs on the sarcophagus made it possible to identify his former occupant as being a man called “pa-di-Hor-Pa-Khered”, and that he had been presented as transformed into Osiris, the Egyptian god master of the underground world.
