The Ministries of Antiquities and Foreign Affairs, through the Egyptian Embassy in London, have contacted Christie's auction house in London and UNESCO to halt the sale of a stone statue head attributed to King Tutankhamun at the auction house, as soon as the announcement of the artifact's sale on July 4 was spotted. They requested the documents relating to the ownership of the artifact and asserted Egypt's right to the piece under current and previous Egyptian laws.
For its part, the Egyptian Embassy in London contacted both the British Foreign Office and the auction house to halt the sale, seize the statue head and return it to Egypt, and called on the British side to stop the sale of the other Egyptian pieces scheduled to be sold at Christie's on July 3 and 4, stressing the importance of obtaining all their ownership documents. This comes within the framework of continuous coordination between the Ministries of Antiquities and Foreign Affairs to recover Egyptian antiquities that left their homeland illegally.
