Khaberni - The Cairo Criminal Court issued severe rulings against the defendants in the case of stealing a rare ancient gold bracelet from the restoration laboratory inside the Egyptian Museum at Tahrir, a case that caused widespread uproar in Egypt.
The court sentenced the first defendant (a restoration specialist at the museum) and the second defendant to 15 years of rigorous imprisonment, while deciding to fine the third and fourth defendants 5,000 Egyptian pounds each.
The case began last September, when the security forces received an official report from the museum’s agent and a restoration specialist about the disappearance of an ancient gold bracelet dating back to the late era (approximately the 21st Pharaonic dynasty), a rare piece stored inside an iron safe at the restoration laboratory.
Security investigations, supervised by the Ministry of Interior, revealed that the first defendant (a restoration specialist) exploited her job position on September 9, 2025, and stole the bracelet by ‘deception’ during her work. She then quickly contacted one of her acquaintances, the owner of a silver shop in the Sayeda Zeinab area in Cairo (the second defendant), who in turn sold the piece to a gold workshop owner in the Sagh area for 180,000 Egyptian pounds.
Seizure of the financial amounts
Subsequently, the workshop owner sold the piece to a worker at a gold foundry for 194,000 Egyptian pounds, who then melted it down with other jewelry, permanently losing its archaeological value.
The defendants admitted to the details of the incident during investigations, and the financial amounts obtained from the sales were seized from them. The investigations confirmed that some of the subsequent defendants dealt with the piece as ordinary gold without knowing its archaeological nature, while the involvement of the first defendant and the second defendant in the theft and sale was directly confirmed.
This incident is one of the rare occurrences targeting an archaeological piece inside the museum itself, and it has sparked a wide debate about the security of Egyptian museums, especially in light of the preparations for the opening of the grand Egyptian Museum and the state's emphasis on protecting Pharaonic heritage.
