Mummy remains and a painted wooden sarcophagus are among a collection of artifacts that an Irish university plans to return to Egypt.
The items are owned by University College Cork (UCC) and dated between 975 BC and 100 AD. The sarcophagus was donated to the Union Carbide Corporation in 1928 and, judging by an inscription made on its surface, likely contained the remains of a man named Poplar.
The university said it would return its collection of Egyptian artifacts in 2023. The collection includes a set of four canopic vessels, which are containers in which mummified organs are placed individually during the mummification process. The urns are identified by their lids, which were usually shaped like four animal-headed guardian deities. A funerary mask and corpse coverings known as cartons will also be returned to Egypt.
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There are no records detailing how the cartonage got to UCC; The sarcophagus was excavated by the Italian Egyptologist Ernesto Schiaparelli in the early 20th century. The planned repatriation is part of an ongoing collaboration between UCC, the Egyptian and Irish governments and the National Museum of Ireland to identify and repatriate stolen cultural heritage in Irish cultural institutions.
Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, said in a statement that he was “delighted” that his agency was involved in what he described as an “important project”. Egypt’s ambassador to Ireland, Mohamed Tharwat Selim, expressed his gratitude for the cooperation that made the return possible.
Ireland is among a growing number of countries in the Global North that acknowledge the fact that some of the artifacts in their collections were acquired through illegal trade or during colonial times.
Many major Western museums have voluntarily returned stolen artifacts to their countries of origin, while others have resisted the idea of dismantling their collections. Recently, the British Museum in London made tentative proposals towards loaning the Parthenon Marbles to Greece, which would fulfill a long-standing goal of the Greek government to see the precious sculpture – taken from Greece by a Scottish nobleman in the 19th century – reunited with the Acropolis in Athens.
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