Officials with U.S. Customs managed to seize an over 3,000-year-old ancient Egyptian artifact this past week as it tried to make its way through the port of Memphis.
As part of a Thursday announcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection stated that they had managed to secure the artifact, which was a lid from a canopic jar used in ancient Egyptian funerary rites, at the port of Memphis, Tennessee. As reported by CBP, the item is one that is officially protected under federal law and many different bilateral treaties. The shipper of the item made the claim that it was just an antique stone statue, but also made quite a few different and conflicting statements.
“On Wednesday, August 17, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at the port of Memphis, TN intercepted an ancient Egyptian artifact shipped from Europe,” stated CBP in a Thursday press release. “The shipment was manifested as an antique stone sculpture over 100 years old, and sent from a dealer to a private buyer in the U.S.”
“CBP worked with subject matter experts at the University of Memphis Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology to determine that the artifact was authentic,” the agency went on to state. “It is an Egyptian canopic jar lid of the funeral deity named Imsety.”
As stated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art situated in New York City, canopic jars were an essential piece of the overall burial rites throughout ancient Egypt, storing the internal organs of a person being mummified. There was also a time in history when the organs were not stored in these jars, but instead returned to the cavities of the mummified bodies; the jars were still stored alongside their respective mummies in order to give protection to the deceased person. The jars normally came in sets of four, and the most prominent ones sported stylized ornate lids that highlighted the visage of protective deities called the “Sons of Horus.” Imsety, who was normally depicted with a human head, was the guardian of the deceased person’s liver.
“The lid is likely from the Egyptian Third Intermediate Period, 1069 BC to 653 BC, making it potentially 3,000 years old,” stated CBP in its press release. “The artifact is on a list of items protected by bilateral treaties and falls under the CPIA 19 USC 2609; designated archaeological materials of cultural property imported into the U.S. subject to seizure and forfeiture. CPIA is the congressionally passed Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act of 1983, and restricts importing some archaeological and ethnological materials into the country. The shipper also made contradictory statements regarding the declared value of the item, and CBP seized it. It was turned over to Homeland Security Investigations for further examination and to determine it’s provenance.”