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
Soleimani warned Al-Assad about ‘spy’ Luna Al-Shibl: Al-Majalla
LONDON: The late Iranian General Qassem Soleimani confronted Syria’s National Security Bureau chief Ali Mamlouk in late 2019 after seeing Luna Al-Shibl leaving his office. Al-Majalla magazine claims its reporters reviewed a document containing the full Arabic transcript of their exchange.
Soleimani reportedly asked, “Who is this?” and Mamlouk replied, “She is Louna Al-Shibl, the president’s adviser.”
The Quds Force commander pressed further: “I know, I know… but who is she really? Where did she work?”
According to Al-Majalla, a sister publication of Arab News, he said her former salary was “ten thousand dollars,” compared with her current salary of “five hundred thousand Syrian pounds,” before asking: “Does it make sense for someone to leave ten thousand dollars for five hundred thousand pounds? She is a spy.”
Both Soleimani and Maher Al-Assad, commander of the Syrian army’s powerful Fourth Division, had warned the ousted president’s inner circle about Al-Shibl, Al-Majalla reported.
‘Suspicious’ car crash
On July 2, 2024, Al-Shibl was involved in what officials described as a traffic accident on the Damascus-Dimas highway. She was hospitalized and died four days later.
But Al-Majalla reported that photos of her armored BMW showed only minor damage, raising immediate questions among those close to the case.
Eyewitnesses told the magazine that the crash was intentional. One said, “a car approached and rammed her vehicle,” and before her bodyguard could exit, “a man attacked her and struck her on the back of the head,” causing paralysis that led to her death.
She was first taken to Al-Saboura clinic, then transferred to Al-Shami Hospital. Several senior regime-linked figures, including businessman Mohammed Hamsho and an aide to Maher Al-Assad, were present when her condition deteriorated. One witness told Al-Majalla that when her bodyguard tried to explain what had happened, “he was arrested immediately in front of the others.”
The presidency later issued a brief statement announcing her death. Her funeral was attended only by a handful of officials. Then president Al-Assad did not attend.
