Several ancient treasures were stolen from the Egyptian Museum, including a statue of King Tutankhamun, when looters broke in during the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, authorities said on Sunday.
The pieces include a gilded wooden statue showing the boy pharaoh being carried by a goddess and parts of another statue of him harpooning fish, minister of state for antiquities Zahi Hawass said. Looters broke into the museum in Cairo's Tahrir Square on January 28 when anti-Mubarak protesters drove his despised police from the streets in a series of clashes and torched an adjacent ruling party building.
Museum director Tarek al-Awadi said looters went on a rampage, shattering 13 display cases and at least 70 artefacts. He added that curators were still carrying out an inventory to determine the extent of the losses.
The missing pieces include a limestone statue of Pharaoh Akhenaten holding an offering table, a statue of Queen Nefertiti making offerings and a sandstone head of a princess from Amarna, a vast archaeological site in central Egypt. Also missing were a stone statuette of a scribe from Amarna and 11 wooden shabti statuettes of Yuya, a powerful courtier from the time of the 18th Dynasty, which ruled along the banks of the Nile more than 3,000 years ago.