Egypt to move 20,000 artefacts found by Israelis
Cairo (Egypt) 31 May 2000
Egypt will display thousands of ancient coins,
bones and pots, that were handed over by Israel after its withdrawal from the
Sinai Peninsula, in a new museum, officials said on Sunday.
The 20,000 artefacts, which were discovered
by Israeli archaeologists, will be taken in 2,000 crates from the Egyptian
Museum to a new scientific museum facility built at a cost of 2.5 million
pounds ($723,000) in the Suez Canal town of Qantara, 130 km (80 miles)
northeast of Cairo.
Sinai antiquities director Mohamed Abdel
Maksoud said the transfer of the finds, which include human bones, coins,
pottery and stone items from Pharaonic, Roman, Greek and Islamic times, would
start on June 3 and finish by the end of the month.
Israel captured the Sinai in the 1967 Middle
East war and returned it in 1982 after Egypt became the first Arab country to
sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state in 1979.
"Israeli archaeological teams gathered
these pieces from 35 areas in north and south Sinai," Maksoud told
Reuters.
He said Israel had begun returning them in
1994, a process that took two years to complete. Some of the pieces will be
used for study and the rest will be exhibited for tourists and scholars in the
Qantara museum, he added.
GRi../