King Tut's Grandaddy Gets His Eye Back

September 10, 2008

It's good news: looted artifacts are returning home these days.

Last week the looted Axum obelisk was returned to Ethiopia after a 70-year exile in Rome. Today Egypt's culture minister Faruk Hosni announced that Switzerland has agreed to return a pharaoh's eye.

The eye was stolen 36 years ago from the statue of Amenhotep III, the 18th dinasty pharaoh who was most likely Tutankhamun's grandfather.

About 50cm long, the eye was removed from Amenhotep III's statue when a a fire broke out in the King's temple in Luxor.

"The thieves sold it to an American antiquities dealer who then auctioned it at Sotheby's," Hosni said.

The eye was then bought by a Swiss antiquities dealer. In 2002, it ended up in the Antikenmuseum in Basel, Switzerland.

Following a two year negotiation, the Swiss museum unconditionally accepted to return Amenhotep III's eye back to Egypt within four weeks.