The planned auction of a 3,000-year-old bust of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun in London has provoked angry reactions from Cairo. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said before the auction scheduled for today that the auction would be in conflict with international agreements and conventions.
The former Minister of Antiquities, Sahi Hawass, said the bust was probably stolen from the Karnak Temple Complex in the 1970s. The Christie’s auction house plans to auction the 28.5-centimeter bust today in London. Expected proceeds of more than four and a half million euros. The bust comes from the private Resandro collection.
„Object is and has never been the subject of investigations“
Christie’s was astonished at the angry reactions from Egypt. The country had never expressed itself in this form about the bust, which had been known and publicly exhibited for many years. „The object is and has never been the subject of investigations,“ said the auction house.
Tutankhamun was said to have become a pharaoh at the age of only nine, and died ten years later, around the year 1323 BC. His tomb in the Valley of the Kings was discovered in 1922 by the British archaeologist Howard Carter. Unlike many other pharaoh’s tombs, it was not already plundered, but contained more than 5,000 intact objects, many of them gold.
