Egypt retrieves 3 mummy parts smuggled to US over 90 years ago

CAIRO - Egypt received three ancient mummy parts that had been smuggled to the United States since 1927, the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities said in a statement on Tuesday.

"The Egyptian consulate in New York city has received the three mummy parts today to return them later to Egypt," said Shaaban Abdel-Gawad, director general of the Department of Recovered Antiquities at the Ministry of Antiquities.

The three parts are the head and two hands of an ancient mummy that had been stolen from the Valley of Kings of Upper Egypt's monument-rich Luxor city and smuggled abroad since 1927.

The official explained that the three parts had recently been displayed for sale at an auction in Manhattan of New York city when the US concerned authorities stopped the sale and seized them.

Abdel-Gawad said in a previous TV interview that the Department of Recovered Antiquities retrieved last June 46 smuggled mummy parts.

Also on Tuesday, the staff of the University of Sydney's Nicholson Museum in Australia were shocked to find a 2,500-year-old Egyptian mummy inside a coffin that was thought to be empty.

The United States, in cooperation with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, is currently hosting two exhibitions of ancient Egyptian artifacts. One is on world-famous ancient King Tutankhamun or King Tut at the California Science Center in Los Angeles and another on Egypt's underwater recovered artifacts held at Saint Louis Art Museum in Missouri under the theme of "Sunken Cities: Egypt's Lost Worlds."