Federal agents seized a millennia-old ancient Egyptian artifact in Memphis, Tennessee, that was imported from Europe. On August 17, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said they discovered the shipment of the 3,000-year-old funerary canopic jar lid named after the Egyptian deity Imsety. 

According to the agency's statement, the ancient jar was shipped from a dealer to a private buyer in the US, and experts believe the lid is known to have been utilized for storing the mummified remains of Imsety. 

Authorities resorted to experts at the University of Memphis Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology to identify the artifact’s origins, with a suspected production date between 1069 B.C. to 653 B.C. The lid is sculpted to illustrate the head of the funeral deity, Imsety, whose role in Egyptian mythology was to protect the liver of a deceased person. The size of the artifact was not disclosed by the agency. 

In a statement, CBP officials stated the artifact is preserved by bilateral treaties around the import of archaeological materials - the authorities confiscated the item under the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act of 1983, which clarifies the means of prohibiting and preventing the illicit import, export, and transfer of ownership of cultural property adopted by the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 

Related News

Looted Italian artifact smuggled under pasta pile found in Australia

Thai archaeologists face trouble uncovering history because of looting

According to the CBP statement, the unidentified shipper, whose location in Europe has not been announced by authorities, submitted “contradictory” statements regarding the artifact's value - it was subsequently seized and handed over to the Department of Homeland Security Investigations for further inspection.

A series of artifact restorations has been an occurrence in different parts of the world for the past few months, with the US ranking in the top. In June, more than 200 objects thought to have been stolen from cultural sites around the nation and trafficked in the US were returned to Italy worth approximately $10 million and believed to be from the 3rd and 4th centuries B.C.E.

That same month, prosecutors in New York confiscated five Egyptian antiques from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) as part of an international trafficking investigation involving the former director of the Louvre Museum in Paris, which include a series of painted linen fragments dated between 250 and 450 BC and portraying a scene from the Book of Exodus, are worth more than $3 million.

In August, it was announced that Washington will be returning 30 stolen antiques to Cambodia, including bronze and stone statues of Hindu and Buddhist deities which were carved over a thousand years ago, according to US officials. The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Damian Williams, said the items being returned were sold by Douglas Latchford to Western buyers. Latchford is notorious for issuing fake documents to conceal that the antiques were looted and smuggled. 

The UK also began to return artifacts, starting with the Glasgow Museums Institution which said it will return seven Indian cultural artifacts plundered during British colonial control, a first for a UK museum service. Six of the objects were taken in the 1800s from northern India, while the seventh was unlawfully acquired after being stolen from its original owners.

Furthermore, 97 artifacts looted from Nigeria by the British colonial forces in 1897, could be returned to Nigeria following the latter’s request for the repatriation of the culturally significant items earlier this year. The 97 artifacts, which included bronzes, were stolen from Benin City and are presently housed at the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.