Egypt Regains Old Treasures.

EGYPTIAN art objects; ART thefts; MUSEUMS

EGYPT; UNITED States

Federal immigration officials returned more than 80 ancient artifacts to the Egyptian government on Wednesday, pieces that had been stolen from a museum near Cairo in 2002 by a United States Army helicopter pilot and later sold to an antiquities dealer. The antiquities, right, seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after an investigation in 2006, were among 370, dating to 3000 B.C. or earlier, that were discovered missing from a museum in Maadi, a suburb of Cairo. At a ceremony in Manhattan, Peter J. Smith, special agent in charge of the immigration department's Office of Investigations, returned the artifacts to Egypt's consul general in New York, Hussein Mubarak, and Attiya Radwan, who oversees the Central Department for Upper Egypt Monuments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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