With the opening of the magnificent $1.5 Billion USD Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) within sight of the Pyramids of Giza this year, Egypt finally has a venue worthy of the unrivalled artefacts removed from its tombs and temples over the centuries. The Egyptian government will be hoping that the new museum will put to bed a longstanding concern of Egyptologists – the fact that precious artefacts seem to keep going missing. As recently as 2018, a collection of 195 artefacts and some 21,600 coins were returned to Egypt after being seized by Italian authorities from criminals attempting to smuggle them into Europe. The illicit trade in ancient Egyptian artefacts is big business and conspiracy theories abound (some not without merit) about which major political and financial interests are involved in this oldest of black markets. 

When most people think of ancient Egypt, the tomb of the boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun is the first thing that springs to mind. The majority of the tomb’s contents are still yet to be transferred to the GEM from the old Egyptian Museum in Cairo’s Tahrir square, where they stand today as more or less the only attraction of interest still at the venue. Where skulduggery is concerned, the grubby fingerprints of the British Empire are never far away. A century on from Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s final resting place in the Valley of the Kings, recently declassified unpublished documents from London’s National Archives shed new light on the fate of some of the objects buried with Luxor’s most famous son. 

“Tutankhamun’s gold became an active participant in 20th-century politics at the moment of its discovery,” writes Egyptologist Tom Hardwick. “These unpublished political archives reveal the tomb to be less a treasure trove than a diplomatic minefield.” While Britain

controlled Egypt in the period immediately following the First World War, management of the country’s antiquities were left to the Egyptian authorities, much to the chagrin of the likes of Howard Carter and his benefactor Lord Carnarvon. Since the 1850s, excavation had been under the auspices of the French Services des Antiquités, with whom Carnarvon (as the man providing the cash) had a deal to a share of half of anything the spoils of every excavation. Carnarvon later signed a lucrative deal with the Times of London that gave the paper privileged access to the tomb of Tutankhamun. The Times took commission from archaeologists for access, including Egyptians. 

Following Carnarvon’s death in April, 1923, Carter was marginalized by the French Service and the Egyptian government. Seeing him as a nuisance, the French complained to the High Commissioner for Egypt, Lord Allenby (who had earlier pushed for the country’s independence) that: “[Carter] already exaggerates very seriously his services to the Egyptian Government and speaks of himself with the respect due to a European Power. This is a disquieting symptom.” Carter eventually abandoned the tomb with the pharaoh's sarcophagus still inside (with its lid open – an ominous sign for believers in the curse). While the Englishman was later reinstated to the project, he and Lord Carnarvon’s widow received none of the objects or replicas they had expected. In 1929, when the tomb was all but empty, the Egyptian government and the new Labour government in Britain refused a plan even for replicas of the tomb's contents to be sold to the British Museum. 

When Carter died in March 1939, his niece, Phylis Walker, found a number of objects inscribed with Tutankhamun’s name in his Kensington Flat. As Hardwick writes: “Photographs of Carter’s flat show that his desk was guarded by two ushabti figures made of shining dark blue faience, while elsewhere were faience vessels, openwork gold ornaments, and a large headrest made of dark blue glass edged with gold.” In response to this an internal British Home Office memo stated, apparently without irony, that: “We are so accustomed to adopting the ‘holier than thou’ attitude towards Egyptians in general (not to mention other foreigners) that it is indeed a shock to find that a British Egyptologist can, on occasion, behave as a crook.” The government instructed Walker to give the objects to the Egyptian embassy in London, where they spent the remainder of the Second World War. They were quietly returned to Egypt in 1946.

The Nasser revolution in 1952 resulted in the uncovering of more objects that had been kept by King Farouk for his own collection, including Tutankhamun’s wondrous gold and glass headrest. Egypt’s new government decided to send the tomb’s contents on tour to boost international support for Egypt. As they did this, museums around the world began to examine their own collections, resulting in the return of many more of the boy king’s effects being returned to Egypt throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. As late as 2010, New York’s Met Museum returned objects taken from the tomb by persons unknown. 

The British Museum still holds many Egyptian treasures, most notably the Rosetta Stone and papyri depicting scenes from the Ancient Book of the Dead. Other countries also have important pieces – the stunning bust of Queen Nefertiti remains in Berlin, having left Egypt in murky circumstances in 1913. With the grand opening of the GEM taking place in Cairo throughout 2025, the time has come for most if not all of these objects to be returned. It remains to be seen what other priceless objects, removed by Carter and others over the centuries, can now finally come home.