Egyptian authorities opened a criminal investigation after a 4,000-year-old limestone relief vanished from the Sixth-Dynasty mastaba of Khentika in the Saqqara necropolis. A British archaeological team discovered the loss in May when it found an empty recess whose edges appeared to have been cut with a saw; officials revealed the theft on Sunday, three months later, according to the Independent.
“The prosecution is investigating the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the painting, but no further details were provided,” said Mohamed Ismail, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, according to Arab News. He added that the file had been forwarded to the Public Prosecution and that an archaeological committee would inventory the tomb’s contents while experts reviewed Saqqara’s historical records.
Dr. Magdy Shakir, chief archaeologist at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, said the relief measures about 40 by 60 centimeters and depicts three scenes from daily life that outline the ancient Egyptian calendar of Akhet (Flood), Proyat (Planting), and Shomu (Harvest), Arab News reported.
Unearthed in the 1950s, the mastaba belongs to a senior official who served between roughly 2700 and 2200 BCE. It has functioned as an archaeological storehouse and, officials said, had been sealed since 2019. Guides often note an inscription on the façade that warns intruders of “divine punishment,” first recorded by British Egyptologist Harry James.
The relief’s disappearance drew attention to broader security gaps. Days earlier, the Interior Ministry announced that a 3,000-year-old gold bracelet of Pharaoh Amenemope had been stolen from a restoration lab at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir, passed through dealers, and melted down. Four suspects, including a museum restorer, were detained; the bracelet sold for about $4,000 before it was destroyed, the Independent reported. Arab News noted public comparisons to the long-missing Vincent van Gogh painting Poppy Flowers, which vanished from a Cairo museum in 2010.
“The missing mural is considered one of the rare pieces of ancient Egyptian heritage, as it depicts part of the mural inscriptions related to the calendar and the seasons of the year in the tomb of Khenti-Ka,” said Dr. Khaled, a senior ministry official, in remarks published by LIFO.
Saqqara, part of the UNESCO World Heritage zone that includes Memphis and the Giza pyramids, contains mastabas, shaft graves, and pyramids from multiple eras. Officials said the Khentika tomb is one of the few Old Kingdom monuments that still preserved extensive reliefs in situ.
An internal ministry memo quoted by LIFO suggested the slab might actually have been removed between 2018 and 2019, before the tomb was last sealed, but the loss escaped notice until the British team returned this spring.
The ministry has not said whether surveillance footage exists or whether guards and former employees have been questioned. An archaeology committee is photographing every remaining object in the Khentika mastaba and cross-checking the images against registration files so authorities can establish a precise timeline and alert international law-enforcement agencies if the relief appears on the antiquities market.
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