The Ancient Egyptian skulls found last year in Manchester, that is, not some bad Indiana Jones reference…
This little beam of light came to shine upon this frankly rather bizarre episode in the Egyptian Daily News, as a mere afterthought to a rather more high profile repatriation of a stela recovered from a London auction house (more on that to come on Pavements of Silver)
…The archaeologists also retrieved from London two human skulls dating back to Egypt’s Greek-Roman era, the Council statement said.
The remains were believed to have been taken by a British doctor during a visit to Egypt in 1988, it said. The man buried the skulls in his front garden in Manchester after his wife refused to allow him to bring them to a new house they bought earlier this year, the statement said.
The garden’s new owner found the skulls and informed police, who had them examined by Oxford University archaeologists. They were discovered to be more than 2,000 years old, and were subsequently handed over to the Egyptian Embassy in London, the statement added.
It doesn’t seem they were buried for religious reasons (contrary to my first assumption of something quite this weird) but exactly why he chose this way to “dispose” of them isn’t entirely clear. Nor quite why he may have taken them in the first place. This answers a few questions, but the whole situation is still decidedly strange.
No doubt that rumors of a curse will crop up soon enough.
Tags: Ancient Egypt, antiquities theft, disrespecting the past, Egyptian Archaeology, egyptian skull, news reports, skulls in garden, South Manchester Reporter, stolen antiquities
