Priceless Pharaoh Statue Found Near Garbage Can

A limestone statue of the renegade Pharaoh Akhenaten has been recovered beside a garbage bin near the Egyptian National Museum in Cairo from which it had been stolen 20 days ago, Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities said Thursday.

The priceless statue was found by a 16-year-old boy near a trash can in Cairo's Tahrir Square, where the 18-day protest that brought down Hosni Mubarak took place.

"He brought the statue to his home and when his mother saw it she called her brother, Dr. Sabry Abdel Rahman, a professor at the American University in Cairo. Dr. Rahman, in turn, called the Ministry of State for Antiquities Affairs to hand the statue over," said the Ministry of Antiquities Affairs in a statement.

Lying by the garbage, as if it suffered another damnatio memoriae some 3,300 years later, the statue shows Akhenaten wearing a blue crown and holding an offering table in his hands.

"It was returned intact, except for the offering table that was found separately inside the Egyptian museum," the ministry said.

The son of Amenhotep III and most likely the father of Tutankhamun, Akhenaten (1353 B.C. - 1336 B.C.) is known as the "heretic" pharaoh who established the capital of his kingdom in Amarna, introducing a monotheistic religion for the sun god Aten that overthrew the pantheon of the gods.

After his death, when Egypt returned to the traditional religion, Akhenaten's name, images and the traces of his reign were eradicated.

Indeed, the recovered limestone statue is one of the few statues that we have from the Amarna Period.

"The entire reign of Akhenaton was unique. The style of the statues and reliefs produced during a large part of the reign are unique as well," Jacques Kinnaer, a Belgian Egyptologist, creator of The Ancient Egypt Site, told Discovery News.

Akhenaten_Offering"I'm relieved to hear that this priceless statue has been recovered," Kinnaer said.

Described to have suffered "very minor damage" during the break-in at the museum on Jan. 28, 2011, the statue is slated to be the "the first object that will be cleaned and restored."

The limestone carving was declared missing last Saturday along with other 17 artifacts, then daringly recovered near a garbage at a public square. It has become the symbol of the alternating feelings that have struck the Egyptologist's community in the past two and a half weeks.

Read more at Discovery News