Serendipity aids Egypt in struggle to recover stolen heritage


A soldier in a military vehicle keeps guard in front of the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir square in Cairo April 19, 2014. Picture taken April 19, 2014. REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih

CAIRO (Reuters) - When French Egyptologist Olivier Perdu saw a fragment of a pharaonic statue on display in a Brussels gallery last year, he assumed it was a twin of an ancient masterpiece he had examined in Egypt a quarter of a century earlier.

The reality was an even more remarkable coincidence: the fragment was part of the very same artefact - a unique 6th century B.C. statue hewn from pale green stone - that Perdu had received special permission to study in Cairo in 1989.

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