Sarcophagus of Ankhenmaat

Sarcophagus of Ankhenmaat

In September 2022, the Manhattan DA's office announced the seizure and return of an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus lid, known as the 'Green Coffin,' from the Houston Museum of Nature and Science.

The unique sarcophagus lid dates to the Late Dynastic Period and belonged to a priest named Ankhenmaat, who worshipped the ram-headed god Heryshaf between 300 and 30 B.C.E. in Faiyum, Egypt. The coffin was looted from a site in the nearby town of Abusir al-Malaq in 2008 and allegedly trafficked by a group of European dealers referred to as the Dib-Simonian network.

Roben Dib and his long-term colleague Serop Simonian (a German of Armenian descent) were the alleged kingpins of an antiquities trafficking network that funneled numerous antiquities out of Egypt through Simonian's Dionysos gallery in Hamburg, Germany. In the case of the Green Coffin, the item was imported to the United States and sold to an unnamed private collector, who lent it to the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University.

It remained in Atlanta until 2013, when it was returned to the private collector, who then lent it to the Houston Museum of Nature and Science. It went on display there in the Hall of Ancient Egypt exhibit until its seizure as part of a broader investigation of the Dib-Simonian network launched in 2018. The Green Coffin was formally handed over by United States diplomats at a ceremony in Cairo in January, 2023.

Both Simonian and Dib were later arrested in Germany for the alleged sale of looted Egyptian antiquities to leading museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Louvre Abu Dhabi.

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Funerary Object – coffins, mummy portraits, grave goods

Late Dynastic Period Egyptian

Houston Museum of Natural Sciences

Michael C. Carlos Museum (Emory University)

Egypt

Jason Felch

Damien Huffer