Caretaker Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Saturday that the Netherlands would return a 3,500-year-old limestone head to Egypt before the end of 2024, synchronizing the handover with the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza.
Dutch officials said the sculpture, dated to 1479-1425 BCE and portraying a courtier of Pharaoh Thutmose III, would be delivered to Egypt’s ambassador in The Hague within months. A ceremonial transfer in Giza was planned, although no date had been set.
“The Netherlands is committed to returning stolen heritage, including unlawfully exported heritage,” said the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in a written statement.
The bust surfaced at the TEFAF art fair in Maastricht in March 2022. An anonymous complaint prompted Dutch police and the Cultural Heritage Inspection Authority to seize the object. Investigators concluded it had left Egypt illegally, most likely during the 2011 Arab Spring. The dealer voluntarily relinquished the piece, and a Dutch court authorized authorities to hold it while Cairo and The Hague negotiated its return.
Dutch authorities framed the restitution as proof of their compliance with the 1970 UNESCO Convention on combating illicit trafficking in cultural property. Previous Dutch restitutions included artifacts sent back to Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
“Egypt believes that Egyptian art objects should be displayed in Egypt and not in Western museums,” said a senior official at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, speaking to BBC News. The country continues to press for the return of the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum and the bust of Nefertiti from Berlin.
The Grand Egyptian Museum, first proposed in 1992 and delayed by political turmoil, opened at the weekend with more than 50,000 antiquities on view, including the complete funerary collection of Tutankhamun and an 83-ton statue of Ramses II. Delegations from 79 countries attended the inauguration, where a Peace Banner was raised and side meetings discussed a Gaza cease-fire and a reconstruction conference.
Prime Minister-designate Dick Schoof wrote on X that the limestone head “represents an important part of Egyptian and world history” and that its return “comes within the framework of cooperation between the two countries in the field of heritage protection and combating antiquities smuggling.”
Often called the Napoleon of Egypt, Thutmose III led 17 military campaigns and expanded Egyptian control deep into the Levant and Nubia. The courtier depicted in the limestone head served during that era of expansion.
Egyptian media reported that the Grand Egyptian Museum was one of several venues under consideration for the artifact once it arrives from The Hague. “Every artifact we recover is a chapter of our history restored,” said a curator at the museum on state television.
Written with the help of a news-analysis system.