The Boston Museum of Fine Arts recently returned a 3,200-year-old ancient Egyptian sarcophagus to a museum in Sweden where it disappeared decades ago.
The painted coffin, which once housed the mummified remains of an ancient Egyptian boy named Pa-nefer-neb, had been missing from Gustavianum, the museum of Uppsala University, for over 50 years. Pa-nefer-neb lived under ancient Egypt’s 19th dynasty of pharaohs, which lasted from 1295-1186 BC.
“It came to Uppsala University in 1922 but has been missing from the collections since at least the 1970s,” Ludmila Werkström, curator of Gustavianum’s historical collections, said in a release. It came to Sweden after being found in Egypt by British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in 1920.
The Gustavianum did not know how the sarcophagus went missing, but after 1970 it turned up again when a man named Olof Liden, purporting to be an agent for the now-late Swedish artist Eric Ståhl, sold it to the Boston museum in 1985, according to the MFA website.
In 2023, staff at MFA noticed a discrepancy between the chain of custody and authentication provided at the time of sale and a collection of images from Petrie’s museum, which showed the coffin being excavated and noted it had been sent to Uppsala.
After connecting with Gustavianum, MFA determined the coffin had probably been stolen, and it was sent back to Sweden.
“It has been wonderful working with our colleagues in Uppsala on this matter, and it is always gratifying to see a work of art return to its rightful owner,” MFA Sadler Senior Curator of Provenance Victoria Reed said in a release.
Gustavianum Museum Director Mikael Ahlund said “it is very gratifying that this return has now come to pass. The sarcophagus is an excellent complement to our Egyptian collections and will now be available for research. It needs some restoration, however, and it will be some time before it can be shown to the public.”
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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