Museum returns Egyptian casket
The museum at Southern Illinois University returned a Ptolemaic bronze cat casket this week to the Egyptian embassy in New York after learning it had been illegally smuggled out of the country.
The bronze casket, in which ancient Egyptians put the remains of cats, was purchased by the university in 1996 from a private collector in Paris, said Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of the Cairo-based Supreme Council of Antiquities.
The illicit nature of the casket’s acquisition was discovered when museum director Donna Bachman asked the supreme council for details about the archaeological site from which it was excavated, Hawass said.
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