Six locals and three Germans were sentenced to five years jail this week for stealing artefacts from Cairo’s Great Pyramid.
The Germans, who were sentenced in absentia, had claimed they were researchers to get special access, but used the privilege to remove pieces of an ancient scroll bearing the name of the Pharaoh Khufu as well as rock samples. The jailed Egyptians were a director of a travel company, two security guards and three antiquities ministry employees.
The Great Pyramid, also known as the Pyramid of Cheops, is the biggest and most famous of the three pyramids at Giza. It houses the tomb of Pharaoh Khufu, and is the only survivor of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The crime was discovered at the end of 2013 by Egyptian authorities, who announced in August that the missing fragments had been recovered. A judicial source said that the German researchers took the scroll pieces in order to determine their age and bolster an unorthodox theory that the pyramids may be several millennia older than the construction period accepted by most Egyptologists.
The source said the court also ordered an enquiry to determine the role in the theft of Egypt’s former head of antiquities, Zawi Hawass. Hawass told reporters: “These remarks are totally unfounded”.
