Cairo — The prime minister of the Netherlands announced Sunday that the European nation will soon return a 3,500-year-old sculpture to Egypt, a day after he attended the lavish opening ceremony of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza.
Prime Minister Dick Schoof said in a statement that, during a meeting on Sunday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, he informed his counterpart that the Netherlands would return a bust of a high-ranking official from the dynasty of Pharaoh Thutmose III.
The piece was discovered up for sale at an art fair in 2022 and was confiscated after Dutch authorities received an anonymous tip about its illegal origin, according to a statement from the Dutch government.
The statement said the art show “trader voluntarily renounced the sculpture” and that Dutch police and other officials “have investigated the origin of the head and found that the head was obtained by looting and was unlawfully exported.”
Government of the Netherlands 
The bust is expected to be handed over to the Egyptian ambassador to the Netherlands by the end of this year, the statement said.
It will be the first artifact returned to Egypt since the GEM’s grand opening event. Several campaigns before the opening have sought to bring looted Egyptian antiquities back to the country.
Egypt’s government hosted dozens of foreign leaders and dignitaries on Saturday for the official opening ceremony of the new facility, a $1 billion project that was decades in the making.
“It is a great day for Egypt and for humanity. This is Egypt’s gift to the world. It’s a dream come true, after all these years, the GEM is finally and officially open,” Nevine El-Aref, media adviser to the Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, told CBS News on Saturday.
The GEM is one of the largest museums in the world, and the largest dedicated to a single civilization: ancient Egypt. Its subject matter spans some 7,000 years, from prehistory to the end of the Greek and Roman eras around 400 A.D.
Egyptian officials hope the new museum will boost the country’s tourism industry, and with it, the still-struggling economy. They have predicted that the GEM will attract some 5 million visitors per year.
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