A pharaoh cop as smuggler's ingenious export goes home

Published on Friday 19 December 2008 20:47

THE theft was like something from a film featuring his hero James Bond.

The antiques smuggler hid in a Cairo workshop surrounded by paintbrushes and gold leaf, plotting to take a priceless sculpture out of Egypt disguised as a replica of Tutankhamun's mask.

After dipping the head of the pharoah Amenhotep III in a clear plastic liquid, Jonathan Tokely-Parry covered it with gold leaf and painted on crude black stripes to make it look like a cheap reproduction.

The final touch was covering it in wrapping paper from a back street souvenir shop.

Tokely-Parry, whose real name is Jonathan Foreman, then shipped it to Zurich Airport and later removed the plastic.

But yesterday the head – which was stolen and illegally exported 18 years ago by the former British cavalryman – took its first step back to Egypt.

More than ten years since Foreman was jailed, Egyptian ambassador Hatem Seif El Nasr and a representative for Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt, received the sculpture in London.

It fell to Karen Sanig, of the London law firm Mishcon de Reya, to assert Egypt's owner-ship rights and bring about the sculpture's repatriation.

The case was "extremely complicated" as the head was the subject of two criminal proceedings, in the UK and the US, according to the firm.

Ms Sanig, head of art law at Mishcon de Reya, said: "As so often happens with cultural heritage artefacts, the perpetrators are apprehended and dealt with long before the art finds its way back to the true owner.

"The reason is that there is no international law which deals with the trafficking of stolen art and antiquities.

"In this case the determination of Dr Zahi Hawass backed by the Egyptian government enabled a successful resolution without recourse to litigation."

After it was smuggled out of Egypt, the head was taken to Switzerland and illegally imported into the UK, before being given a false provenance.

The head was marketed through a New York dealer who in 2002 was jailed in the US for conspiring to receive stolen Egyptian antiquities. Tokeley-Parry was caught in 1994 when an assistant tried to sell 24 papyrus texts to the British Museum, which realised they were stolen and called in police.

He was convicted in Britain in 1997 of illegally selling stolen archaeological finds, and spent three years in prison.

The head was recovered in 1999 by the Met Police's art and antiques unit, which had been investigating his smuggling activities.

Ms Sanig said: "The return of the head does show that sheer persistence pays dividends."