An ancient gold bracelet belonging to an Egyptian pharaoh that had disappeared from a museum in Cairo was stolen and later melted down, the country’s Interior Ministry said Thursday.
The country’s Tourism and Antiquities Ministry revealed on Wednesday that the 3,000-year-old bracelet belonging to King Amenemope from the Third Intermediate Period went missing from the Egyptian Museum while being restored in a laboratory.
The Interior Ministry said an investigation revealed that one of the museum’s restoration specialists stole the bracelet on Sept. 9. The specialist then contacted a silver shop owner, who sold the bracelet to the owner of a gold workshop in Cairo’s gold and jewlery district for 180,000 Egyptian pounds ($3,700).
The gold workshop owner, in turn, sold it to a worker at a gold foundry for 194,000 Egyptian pounds ($4,000), who melted it down and reshaped it into other jewelry.
The ministry said security forces have arrested the three suspects and the proceeeds from the sale have been seized.
The bracelet was among a collection of artifacts being prepared to be transported to Italy ahead of an exhibition titled “Treasures of the Pharaohs” at a museum in Rome starting next month.
A specialized committee had been formed to inventory and review all artifacts kept in the museum’s restoration laboratory to ensure no other artifacts had gone missing.
Amenemope was a pharoah of the 21st dynasty who ruled Egypt from 993 to 984 B.C., according to the Egyptian Museum. His burial was notable for being one of three entirely intact royal burials known from ancient Egypt.
His tomb was discovered by French Egyptologists Pierre Montet and Georges Goyon in April 1940, but its excavation was delayed by World War II, the museum says on its website.
Egypt is no stranger to high-profile art and antiquities thefts.
Vincent van Gogh’s painting Poppy Flowers, valued at around $55 million, was stolen from Cairo’s Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in 1977, recovered two years later, then stolen again in 2010. It has not yet been recovered.