Met Museum to return prize artifact because it was stolen
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York built a substantial exhibition last year around a new acquisition, a goldensheathed cof¿n from the ¿rst century BCE that was inscribed for Nedjemankh, a high-ranking priest of the ram-headed god Heryshef of Herakleopolis.
But the exhibit, ‘Nedjemankh and His Gilded Cof¿n’, shuttered earlier this week because the Met agreed to return the highly ornamented artifact to Egypt after investigators determined it had been recently plundered from that country.
Museum of¿cials said that they bought the object from an art dealer in Paris in 2017 and were fooled by a phony provenance that made it seem as if the cof¿n had been legitimately exported decades ago.
But prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s of¿ce presented the museum with evidence that suggested it had been looted from Egypt in 2011.
This was the latest of several incidents that have raised questions about the thoroughness of the museum’s vetting procedures when acquiring antiquities. The Met said it had fully cooperated with the district attorney’s investigation and added that the museum will ‘review and revise’ its acquisitions process, nytimes.com reported.
In their statements, museum of¿cials made clear that they understand the institution’s responsibilities as one of the world’s leading encyclopedic museums, with substantial holdings that date from the ancient world.
The Met’s president and chief executive, Daniel Weiss, in a statement, apologized to Khaled El-enany, Egypt’s minister of antiquities, and said the museum was committed to ¿guring out “how we can help to deter future offenses against cultural property”.
Museum of¿cials said that the district attorney’s investigation showed that the Met had received a false ownership history, fraudulent statements and fake documentation, including a forged 1971 Egyptian export license for the cof¿n.
The Met paid €3.5 million (about $3.95 million) for the cof¿n in July 2017, said Kenneth Weine, a spokesman for the museum. He added that it had been purchased from an art dealer in Paris named Christophe Kunicki and that the Met planned to consider ‘all means’ for the recovery of the money it had paid.
A website featuring the name Christophe Kunicki, a Paris address and the title ‘Mediterranean Antiquities’ says that Kunicki specializes in ‘Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Near East antiquities’. There was no response to an email message requesting comment sent to an address listed on the site.
The Met exhibition, originally scheduled to run through April 21, was designed to provide contextual information about Nedjemankh’s role as a priest in ancient Egypt, his burial and the decoration on the cof¿n. Alongside it, the museum displayed some 70 works from its extensive collection, including a priestly headdress, a statuette depicting a worshiping baboon and funerary amulets depicting the four sons of Horus.