funerary equipment from the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankamon, discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 1922, by Howard Carter in tomb KV62.
What was impossible, seems not to be, covered with an armored glass box and kept in a closed room on the second floor, with special security, since this small mask of only 11 kg of solid gold is worth millions of dollars.
It seems that the years that the museum had been open they managed to find a way to violate it, the glass box is empty. The room is dark, there is no longer any brightness inside because the reflection of the light has nowhere to be projected.
The search for the relic of yesteryear was painstakingly searched in every room and corner of the museum.
Tut Ankh Amon
Anne and Dee continue the Cairo Museum, in the room that contains their trousseau, only that the glass box that used to contain their golden mask is empty and sad. Although its 110 kg solid gold chest remains unchanged, it’s polished gold gleaming by the museum’s caretakers.
To make the endless wait more enjoyable, Thomas tells the story of Tut Ankh Amon (1336 BC - 1327 BC) was the thirteenth pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, and the last of the dynasty’s royal line. Horemheb the head of the exercise was crowned pharaoh at his death, but was not of royal lineage.
He became famous when his tomb was discovered intact by British archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922.
He was about 17 when he died and probably inherited the throne at 8 to 9 years of age. In hieroglyph, the name was typically written Amen-tut-ankh. Its original name Tutankhaten means “living image of Aton”, while Tutankamon means “living image of Amun.”
His reign was marked by the return to normality on the Sicilian-religious plane after the interlude starring Akhenaten’s monotheism
One of the great achievements in his short term was the repair of the temples of Amun, damaged during the rule of his father Akhenaten. Mentioned in the Restoration Stele.
One of the biggest enigmas is related to his death, perhaps he was killed or perhaps he died as a result of an injury received while hunting. When we visit his tomb in the Valley of the Kings, I’ll tell you more about him, says Thomas.
Major Mukhabarat Mahmoud of the Egyptian Directorate General of Intelligence also approaches Thomas and convinces him to help them in the search due to his knowledge of Egyptology and archeology.
Citadel Sal-ah-El-Dim
This old Castle of the famous Sultan, next to where Mohamed Ali built the Alabaster Mosque, so beautiful. That medieval fortification is now full of the military and the secret service looking for the stolen piece.
From on high Salah El-din controlled a vast territory and is now the headquarters of Egyptian intelligence.
Rooms with powerful computers and wiretaps all over Cairo discover some dark details of the robbery.
The news could not be made known, the most valuable piece of the Museum was gone, and its visitors would no longer have the same illusion to come to it. So everything remained a strict national secret. And since the Museum had to close, no explanations were necessary.
But how was it possible to violate the security of the Museum? They begin to check the cameras that control the museum.
It happened that in the month of March 2020, a very contagious family of SARS and MERS viruses that humanity had already known before, transmitted from animals to man, originated in a Chinese city, Whuan and quickly spread around the world as lightning, through airplanes, reached Italy, Germany, Spain and Great Britain and the American continent, unleashing like a world pandemic.
While it was being disinfected, the men entered with a mask and white protective suits, no one could enter the museum, only the health workers to sanitize the place. But after they left and several hours in silence, when the museum keepers reopened their doors, people crowded to enter, and were amazed at the giant statues in the main room of the museum, of Pharaoh Amenophis III and Queen Tiye, parents of Akhenaten. But when we reached the second floor in the room that houses the jewel of the museum the Water of the Child King Tut, the glass box was empty.
Egypt has been militarized since the last revolution in 2011, and it is almost impossible to reduce the gold piece through the only international airport, Cairo, the port of Alexandria is too far to pass all the controls imposed, so a military proposes which ones could be the channels of escape for modern grave robbers.
After much investigation, the intelligence discovers in the museum’s security cameras how they entered it and they discover that through an old tunnel that passes under the Museum and reaches the Nile itself, where through a typical Falukas, a not very sophisticated boat They would have left with the mask of death to an unknown destination.
The intelligence takes the intercepted audios of a Catholic Cardinal in the Coptic Quarter, his name Angelo Boticelli and recently he has made some unusual visits, this high-ranking religious, they only know that he is almost a diplomat from the Vatican. The eavesdropping leads the clues to potential buyers of the black market of antiquities; T homas recalls that recently the ex-consul and the nephew of Butros Galli were accused of illegal trafficking of archaeological pieces from Egypt to Italy in 2018. At that time it was issued an arrest warrant against them and against the Italian citizen Ladislav Otakar Skakal and Interpol also issued a red alert, after confirming that more than 21,000 artifacts from different times were found in a container of goods with diplomatic protection. Obviously Egyptian citizens were also involved in the transport. The honorary consul, who was in charge until 2014. Among the Egyptian citizens involved was the nephew of the late former UN Secretary-General and brother of a former Egyptian Finansas minister accused of corruption.
The case dates back to 2018, when the Salerno customs authorities found the artifacts inside a container and notified the two countries. Italy shortly after handed over the seized pieces to the Egyptian authorities, after the Attorney General’s Office so requested, after purchasing the illegal way in which they had arrived, under diplomatic cover.
Egypt tries to prevent the smuggling of antiquities from the country and makes great diplomatic efforts to recover the stolen pieces, which are in proven collections around the world and even in museums.
Thomas emphatically remembers the battle that Cairo has waged, for years, to recover the bust of Queen Nefertiti, kept in the Neues Museum in Berlin.
Jamil Fahmi, an Egyptian intelligence security expert, detects several identifiable international calls, deducing that they are interested in keeping the unique piece. Among them are an Arab Sheikh from the Emirates , an Indian magnate, a billionaire from South Africa who owns a diamond jewelry store, one from Southeast Asia who lives in the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia who owns one of the most important technology factories and computers in the world and the main investor in Malaysian oil. Others , a Russian oil magnate who lives in Moscow , Roman Abramovich the owner of the Chels e a Britanico football team and main owner for his participation in the Gazprom Neft Oil Company, the Russian steel through the Russian Aluminum and the commercial airlines Aeroflot Russian Airlines. Finally a Russian investor businessman who resides in Monte Carlo , the very Dmitri Yevquenievich Rybolovle president of AS Monaco who despite being a philanthropist with his charitable works in his country, has the reputation of being a select collector, who had in his hands as He owned the painting “Salvator Mundi” by Da Vinci and would now be behind the mask of the boy king.
The black market is in full swing, says Anne, but where will I be auctioned? It is not known, says Jamil, possibly Casablanca in Morocco, a luxurious Hotel in Abu Dhabi and or the modern center of Singapore in Asia, are on the list of possible places, according to the information they already handle.
Jamil Fahmi quickly displayed his Esglobal map of Africa, on a screen with a blue background, highlighting the map in black and the routes that link the continent in orange.
The