Egypt recovers 200 artifacts from the Al-Ahly Bank

The Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) received 200 artifacts from Al-Ahly National Bank and have stored them in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo for restoration and documentation. The recovered collection was stored in the bank’s treasury since the early 20th century and it included objects from the ancient Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Coptic and Islamic eras. Among the objects are limestone statuary heads of ancient Egyptian and Greco-Roman deities such as Horus, Hathor and Ptah, as well as Roman terracotta statues and
twenty coins from the Islamic and Modern period. Two archaeological and legal committees inspected the collection and confirmed the objects’ authenticity. Chairman of the Al-Ahly Bank stated that these objects were in the possession of foreigners who lived in Egypt during the late 19th and 20th centuries. The foreigners were obviously antiquities collectors and had stored their collection inside two treasuries of the bank. Since the early 20th century nobody had asked about the objects and they remained under the bank’s care until the executive board of the bank decided to offer the pieces to the SCA. The committee that inspected the objects, said that all of the objects, which were stored in three boxes in the bank’s vaults, are totally genuine and most of them are very well preserved.