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artifacts

Egypt displays ancient artifacts recovered from smugglers

Catherine Saunders-Watson
Catherine Saunders-Watson
artifacts
The Egyptian Museum, Cairo, taken from the stairwell of the NIle Hilton Hotel opposite. Photo by Bs0u10e01, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

CAIRO (AP) – Egypt has put on display ancient artifacts recently retrieved from Italy after they were confiscated by the Italian police months ago.

Sabah Abdel-Razek, the general director of the Egyptian Museum, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the artifacts include five burial masks, 11 vessels, 151 small statutes and over 20,000 coins from different eras.

Egyptian authorities have said the artifacts were likely excavated and smuggled out of the country in secret, as no museum has records of them.

Egypt says it has retrieved around 1,000 artifacts from 10 different countries over the past two years.

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By AHMED HATEM, Associated Press

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