After Macron’s approval, can Egypt recover its stolen artifacts from France?
French President Emmanuel Macron’s ratification of a bill allowing looted or stolen artifacts to be returned to their countries of origin has reopened the debate over the fate of thousands of Egyptian antiquities in France, especially those housed in the Louvre.
The decision comes amid mounting international pressure to return cultural property taken during occupation and colonial rule. It revives long-standing Egyptian demands for artifacts removed in the 19th and early 20th centuries through official gifts or networks of consuls and foreign dealers.
The Louvre in the dock
Dr. Shaaban Abdel Gawad, former director-general of the General Administration for the Repatriation of Antiquities, told Al Manassa that the Permanent Committee for Egyptian Antiquities suspended permits for Louvre missions after names connected to those missions appeared in French investigations tied to the theft of Egyptian artifacts.
French authorities opened an investigation in 2022 into the purchase of Egyptian artifacts suspected of having been smuggled after 2011 for the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The case included accusations against former Louvre president Jean-Luc Martinez and several specialists in Egyptian antiquities.
“France has stolen more artifacts from Egypt than any other country, and the French are extremely arrogant,” Abdel Gawad told Al Manassa.
Hussein Bassir, an Egyptologist and director of the Antiquities Museum at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, described the French step as “very positive.” He noted that Cairo maintains a substantial list of artifacts it wants to be returned from France, including objects taken from the Dendera Temple and the Seated Scribe statue held at the Louvre.
Bassir told Al Manassa that thousands of artifacts were taken out of Egypt over time, driven by intense competition among European consuls to acquire Egyptian antiquities. France and Britain, he added, top the list of countries holding collections of Egyptian artifacts abroad, noting that the British Museum and the Louvre were formed at a time when antiquities were being removed from Egypt on a wide scale, long before Law 117 of 1983 permanently banned the export of antiquities.
Still, Bassir does not expect any possible path to recover Egyptian artifacts to “empty” the Louvre of its holdings. But he said the museum’s Egyptian wing is one of its most prominent sections, and that recovering parts of those collections “would undoubtedly change the museum.”