Mummy Mask Morass: Egypt's Hawass Again Threatens to Haul St. Louis Director into Court

[Mohammed Zakaria] Ghoneim [an Egyptian archaeologist] registered his discovery [of the mask} in the official ledger at the government warehouse, or magazine, at Saqqara. The page in the ledger book, a key document Egypt has presented to St. Louis to stake its claim, shows a high-quality photograph of the mask, the finder's name and ID number, and a detailed description.

In 1957, Ghoneim published his discovery in a book showing him and the mask at the site, which Egyptologists view as important evidence for Egypt's claim. A second record from Saqqara given to St. Louis showed the artifact was packed in a box with other antiquities in 1959 for a shipment to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo....

Because records were not kept or are lost, Egypt has not determined exactly when the mask was lost. Egyptian research concluded it was stolen in 1959, most likely from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo or en route to it from the Saqqara storeroom.

The [St. Louis] museum said it checked with the [Art Loss] registry before buying the mask to see if it was listed as stolen. It was not. St. Louis also sent a letter to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo saying that it had acquired the mask and that in its response, the Egyptian museum did not indicate the item was stolen. Egypt accuses St. Louis of falsifying the provenance, which documents the history of an artifact's ownership.

The museum's provenance puts the mask in the possession of a Belgian art dealer in 1952. However, Egypt can show that it was in the Saqqara storeroom in both 1952 and 1959, making it improbable it ever left there, especially to a foreign country, in the intervening years.