Egypt has returned a 3,400-year-old statue of the head of ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II from Switzerland after it was stolen and taken out of the country for more than three decades ago, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a statement.
"The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities [...] received the head of a statue of King Ramesses II, which had been received by the Egyptian embassy in the Swiss capital, Bern, last July, after the success of the efforts of the Egyptian Ministries of Tourism and Antiquities, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the concerned authorities to track it down and recover it, as it had left Egypt in an illegal manner," the statement read.
The artifact, while awaiting its restoration, is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the ministry added.
The fragment was stolen from the temple of Ramesses II at Abydos in central Egypt, the authorities said. Shaaban Abdel Gawad, head of Egypt's antiquities repatriation department, said that the statue was believed to have been stolen in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Egyptian authorities said they noticed the artifact when it was put up for sale at an exhibition in the British capital, London, in 2013. It then transited through different countries before arriving in Switzerland.
The stone sculpture returned to Egypt is part of a multi-figure monument depicting a seated pharaoh surrounded by several ancient Egyptian deities.
Ramesses II was the third ruler of the 19th dynasty of Ancient Egypt. He ascended the throne at the age of 25 and is believed to have ruled from 1279 to 1213 BC.