Egypt's interior ministry revealed that a restoration specialist removed the bracelet from a safe at the museum, and after a chain of black market sales, it was melted down. The ministry stated that four individuals confessed to the crime upon arrest and that the money was seized.
The piece was believed to have adorned Pharaoh Amenemope, a ruler of the 21st dynasty around 1,000 BC. The jewellery was thought to have been crafted from a single piece of metal, and at its centre was a sphere of lapis lazuli, a deep-blue gemstone often flecked with gold and favoured by Egypt's ancient ruling class.
“Following the theft, a special committee was set up to review artefacts in the laboratory, and images of the missing bracelet were circulated to antiquities units at Egypt's airports, seaports and land border crossings, fearing it would be smuggled abroad,” a report from Reuters revealed.
“Yet, the Interior Ministry tracked down the theft to a museum restoration specialist who took the artefact and sold it to a silver trader, who passed it on to a workshop owner in Cairo's historic jewellery district. The workshop owner then sold it to a gold smelter, who recast the metal with other items.”
Egyptologist Jean Guillaume Olette-Pelletier told AFP that the simple bracelet was made of culturally significant materials and that ancient Egyptians believed gold represented the ‘flesh of the gods’ and that lapis lazuli was a representation of the gods’ hair. Olette-Pelletier said that while the bracelet may not have been the most ‘beautiful’ example of jewellery from that era, it was scientifically significant.
The Egyptian National Museum holds the oldest archaeological collection in the Middle East and houses more than 170,000 artefacts, including Amenemope's gilded wooden funerary mask.
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