Egypt put on display several artifacts that were retrieved from Italy and likely originally smuggled out of the country.
Sabah Abdel-Razek, the general director of the Egyptian Museum, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the artifacts include five burial masks, 11 vessels, 151 small statutes and over 20,000 coins from different eras.
In May, Shaaban Abdel-Gawad, of the Antiquities Ministry, said 118 ancient Egyptian artifacts found by Italian police more than two months ago would be returned to Egypt.
He told the AP at the time that Egypt was informed in March about the seizure by police in the Italian city of Napoli of pottery vessels from different pharaonic eras, sarcophagi parts, coins, as well as artifacts from the Islamic period.
He added the artifacts were likely first found during illegal excavations in Egypt and smuggled out as no museum holds records of them.
Egypt says it has retrieved around 1,000 artifacts from 10 different countries over the past two years.
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