Cairo: Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced on Thursday that it had retrieved 36 artifacts from the US, which had been smuggled out of the country illegally. A statement by the Ministry said that the retrieved items were returned to the country through Egyptian-US authorities' cooperation.
According to Kuwait News Agency, the retrieved artifacts were divided into three batches. The first batch included 11 items, among them a mummy facemask belonging to a youth from the Roman era. The second batch comprised 24 items, mostly rare pamphlets written in Coptic and Syriac. The third batch included a colored plaster panel dating back to the 18th Dynasty of Egypt.