Egyptian Museum Looting (Tahrir Square, 2011)
Region — where it (roughly) is
Land & claims · BLM · live
The story
While a revolution filled Tahrir Square, thieves slipped into the building that holds the treasures of the pharaohs. On the night of 28 January 2011, with Cairo in upheaval, the Egyptian Museum was broken into — and some of its priceless objects walked out the door.
When the count was made, 54 objects were found to be missing. These were not trinkets but pieces from one of the greatest collections of antiquity on earth, snatched in the cover of chaos. For a time it seemed the museum had suffered a catastrophic, irreversible loss in the span of a single night.
But the story did not end in the dark. A recovery effort followed, and many of the stolen objects were tracked down and returned. Among them was a gilded statuette of Tutankhamun standing on a boat — one of the most evocative of the missing pieces, brought back from the brink of disappearing forever. Object by object, much of what had been taken came home, in one widely reported case after some looted artefacts were recovered having been abandoned nearby.
Not everything returned. A shabti — a funerary figurine — of Yuya, along with a few other funerary statuettes, remained missing, lost in the trafficking networks that swallow stolen antiquities. To keep the hunt alive, the case has been tracked by the institutions built for exactly this: Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, the international reach of Interpol, and the ICOM Egypt Red List that flags at-risk objects to the art and customs world. The missing pieces are not forgotten; they are catalogued, watched for, and waited on.
So the Tahrir Square looting sits in a rare category — not a treasure wholly lost, nor one wholly saved, but partially recovered. Most of what was stolen in that revolutionary night is back behind glass. A handful of objects, the shabti of Yuya among them, are still out there somewhere in the world, their return an open file rather than a closed one.
Fact vs. legend: The 28 January 2011 break-in, the 54 stolen objects, the recovery of many including a gilded Tutankhamun statuette, and the still-missing shabti of Yuya and other funerary statuettes are documented and tracked by the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Interpol, and the ICOM Egypt Red List. This is recorded history, not legend. Search area: The point marks Egyptian Museum (Tahrir Square), Cairo, Egypt — the search area or landmark, not the treasure, whose exact location is unknown.