CAIRO: A 3,000-year-old gold bracelet has gone missing from a restoration laboratory of Cairo’s Egyptian Museum, the country’s antiquities ministry said.
The bracelet, described as a golden band adorned with “spherical lapis lazuli beads,” dates to the reign of Amenemope, a pharaoh of Egypt’s 21st Dynasty .
The ministry, in its statement issued late Tuesday, did not specify when the piece was last seen.
Egyptian media outlets said the loss was detected in recent days during an inventory check ahead of the “Treasures of the Pharaohs” exhibition scheduled in Rome at the end of October.
An internal probe has been opened, and antiquities units across all Egyptian airports, seaports and land border crossings nationwide have been alerted, the ministry said.
The case was not announced immediately to allow investigations to proceed, and a full inventory of the lab’s contents was underway, it added.
The ministry did not respond to an AFP request for comment.
According to Jean Guillaume Olette-Pelletier, an Egyptologist, the bracelet was discovered in Tanis, in the eastern Nile delta, during archaeological excavations in the tomb of King Psusennes I, where Amenemope had been reburied after the plundering of his original tomb.
“It’s not the most beautiful, but scientifically it’s one of the most interesting” objects, the expert, who has worked in Tanis, told AFP.
He said the bracelet had a fairly simple design but was made of a gold alloy designed to resist deformation. While gold represented the “flesh of the gods,” he said, lapis lazuli, imported from what is now Afghanistan, evoked their hair, he said.
The Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square houses more than 170,000 artefacts, including the famed gold funerary mask of King Amenemope.
The disappearance comes just weeks before the scheduled November 1 inauguration of the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum.
One of the museum’s most iconic collections — the treasures of King Tutankhamun’s tomb — is being prepared for transfer ahead of the opening, which is being positioned as a major cultural milestone under President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s government.
In 2021, Egypt staged a high-profile parade transferring 22 royal mummies, including Ramses II and Queen Hatshepsut, to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Old Cairo — part of a broader effort to boost Egypt’s museum infrastructure and tourism appeal.
Egypt says 3,000-year-old gold bracelet missing from museum
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Egypt says 3,000-year-old gold bracelet missing from museum
Flash floods kill 21 in Moroccan coastal town
RABAT: Flash-flooding caused by sudden, heavy rain killed at least 21 people in the Moroccan coastal town of Safi on Sunday, local authorities said.
Images on social media showed a torrent of muddy water sweeping cars and rubbish bins from the streets in Safi, which sits around 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of the capital Rabat.
At least 70 homes and businesses in the historic old city were flooded, authorities said.
Another 32 people were injured and taken to hospital, but most of them have been discharged.
Damage to roads cut off traffic along several routes to and from the port city on the Atlantic coast.
“It’s a black day,” resident Hamza Chdouani told AFP.
By evening, the water level had receded, leaving people to pick through a mud-sodden landscape to salvage belongings.
Another resident, Marouane Tamer, questioned why government trucks had not been dispatched to pump out the water.
As teams searched for other possible casualties, the weather service forecast more heavy rain on Tuesday across the country.
Severe weather and flooding are not uncommon in Morocco, which is struggling with a severe drought for the seventh consecutive year.
The General Directorate of Meteorology (DGM) said 2024 was Morocco’s hottest year on record, while registering an average rainfall deficit of -24.7 percent.
Moroccan autumns are typically marked by a gradual drop in temperatures, but climate change has affected weather patterns and made storms more intense because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture and warmer seas can turbocharge the systems.
