SwissInfoThe head of Pharaoh Ramses II, now in the Cairo MuseumSwissInfo
A fragment of a 3,400-year-old statue representing the head of Pharaoh Ramses II (1303–1213 BC), the third pharaoh of Egypt’s nineteenth dynasty, who ruled from 1279 to 1213 BC, is now being restored at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The statue belongs to a group of sculptures in which the pharaoh is seated next to ancient Egyptian deities. The artifact was stolen from the Ramses II temple in the ancient city of Abydos, southern Egypt, sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s and put up for sale in London in 2013. It then changed hands in several countries before being confiscated in Geneva, Switzerland, and returned to its country of origin. Switzerland and Egypt are both parties to the UNESCO 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, reinforced in 2011 by a bilateral agreement on the import and repatriation of cultural property (Reuters, April 21; Swissinfo, July 4, 2023, and April 22, 2024).
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