[MSN] Egyptian lawyers are likely to sue an American museum for failing to return an ancient Egyptian mask before deadline, the official MENA news agency reported on Tuesday.

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Egypt likely to sue U.S. museum for ancient mask 

16 May 2006
Xinhua News Agency

(c) Copyright 2006 Xinhua News Agency

CAIRO, May 16 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian lawyers are likely to sue an American
museum for failing to return an ancient Egyptian mask before deadline, the
official MENA news agency reported on Tuesday. 

Zahi Hawwas, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities
(SCA), was quoted as saying that the Saint Louis Art Museum of America did
not hand over a Pharaonic era mask as the deadline set by the SCA ended on
Tuesday. 

Hawwas told a press conference that Egypt's public prosecutor office is to
take legal measures against the American museum after having given it an
ultimatum to turn the mask over. 

The mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer, which can be dated back over 3,000 years ago to
the 19th dynasty (1307-1196 BC) of Egypt's Pharaonic era, was stolen and
smuggled illegally out of Egypt, said Hawwas. 

Hawwas explained that he had given the American museum related documents
showing that the burial mask had been sent to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo
in 1959. 

The Saint Louis Art Museum in Missouri, however, disputed that it had
received nothing to support the claim that the mask was stolen before the
museum bought it in 1998 for some 500,000 U.S. dollars. 

Hawwas said that Egypt will also seek the INTERPOL's aid to help restore the
mask, which depicts a young woman with inlaid glass eyes and a gold-coated
face wearing a wig and holding a wooden amulet in each hand. 

The mask was excavated by Egyptian Egyptologist Zakaria Goneim in the
Saqqara area, some 25 km south of Cairo in 1952. 

Goneim had the mask registered and then put it at a nearby warehouse, said
MENA.