A 3,000-year-old head sculpture of Tutankhamun — the Egyptian pharaoh known as King Tut — is to be auctioned in London on Thursday, despite an outcry from Cairo.
Christie’s expects the 28.5cm brown quartzite relic from the Valley of the Kings to fetch more than ￡4 million (US$5.1 million).
The pharaoh’s finely chiseled head comes from the private Resandro Collection of ancient art that Christie’s last sold in 2016 for ￡3 million.
However, Egyptian authorities overseeing the country’s unparalleled collection of antiquities want to see the auction halted and the treasure returned.
“The Egyptian embassy in London requested the British foreign affairs ministry and the auction hall to stop the sale,” the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on June 10.
Former Egyptian minister of antiquities Zahi Hawass on Sunday told reporters that the piece appears to have been “stolen” in the 1970s from the Karnak Temple complex of Egypt’s great monuments.
“The owners have given false information,” he said in a telephone interview. “They have not shown any legal papers to prove its ownership.”
The French-owned British auction house said that the current lot was acquired by Resandro from a Munich-based dealer in 1985.
It traces its prior origins to the 1973-1974 acquisition by another dealer in Austria from the Princely House of Thurn and Taxis in Germany.
The trail peters out shortly afterward and little is known to the public about how the statue found its way to Europe.
“Ancient objects by their nature cannot be traced over millennia,” Christie’s said in a statement.
“It is hugely important to establish recent ownership and legal right to sell, which we have clearly done,” it said. “We would not offer for sale any object where there was concern over ownership or export.”
Britain’s Foreign Office has been in touch with Egyptian authorities, but was not expected to intervene.
International conventions and the British government’s own guidance restrict the sale of works that were known to have been stolen or illegally dug up.
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