# Gilded Coffin of Nedjemankh > Unknown workshop, late Ptolemaic Egypt - c. 150-50 BC > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unknown-ptolemaic-cartonnage-workshop/coffin-of-nedjemankh/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-02 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown workshop, late Ptolemaic Egypt - **Date:** c. 150-50 BC - **Medium:** Cartonnage (linen, glue and gesso), gesso, paint, gold, silver, resin, glass, wood and leaded bronze - **Dimensions:** Lid 181 x 53 x 28 cm; base 180 x 54 x 12 cm - **Object type:** Antiquity - **Period:** Egyptian, late Ptolemaic - **Current location:** Arab Republic of Egypt; unveiled at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, el-Fustat, Cairo - **Attribution:** workshop ## Summary A six-foot cartonnage coffin of about 150 to 50 BC, sheathed in an unbroken skin of gold over raised gesso relief, made for Nedjemankh, a priest of the ram-god Heryshef at Herakleopolis. The Metropolitan Museum of Art bought it in July 2017 for 3.5 million euros, about four million dollars, and made it the centrepiece of an exhibition that ran from July 2018 and drew close to half a million visitors. Kim Kardashian was photographed beside it at the 2018 Met Gala.Its published provenance was a single sentence in the museum's own acquisition announcement: officially exported from Egypt in 1971, since then in a private collection. Every element of that sentence was false. The coffin was dug up in the Minya region in October 2011, in the looting that followed the Egyptian revolution, moved through Dubai to a warehouse in Cologne, restored in Germany and sold in Paris. The 1971 date was chosen because it sits twelve years before Egypt's Law No. 117 of 1983 closed the export of antiquities. The forged licence carried a government stamp reading Arab Republic of Egypt, a name the country did not adopt until September 1971, and two irreconcilable dates.What broke the case was not connoisseurship but a grudge. A Jordanian trafficker who had never been paid his share told a Lebanese collector, who told the Manhattan District Attorney's Antiquities Trafficking Unit. In February 2019 a New York judge was satisfied that the museum was in possession of stolen property in the first degree; agents of Homeland Security Investigations and the District Attorney's office executed a search warrant and took the coffin off display. It went home to Egypt on 25 September 2019. Nobody at the Metropolitan has been charged. The criminal case is in Paris, where the dealers who supplied the museum and a former president of the Louvre are under investigation, and where, as at August 2026, nobody has been tried. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 150-50 BC** Made for Nedjemankh, priest of Heryshef-who-resides-in-Herakleopolis `[documented]` (origin) The owner, his titles and his mother's name, Banabes, are given in the hieroglyphic inscription on the lid. Nothing else about him is recorded. No burial context has ever been excavated or published, so the coffin's own text is the only document of the man it was made for. - **-October 2011** Buried in Egypt; find-spot never archaeologically established `[unknown]` (gap) Prosecutors place the looting in the Minya region on the evidence of metadata in photographs taken of the still-dirty coffin in the autumn of 2011. Abusir el-Meleq has also been proposed. No tomb, no plan and no associated assemblage exist for this object, which is the permanent loss in the case and the one no repatriation repairs. - **at least 1936 (claimed)-1971 (claimed)** Habib Tawadros, dealer, Cairo, and his heirs (claimed) `[disputed]` (false provenance) The story sold to the Metropolitan Museum was that the coffin had belonged to Habib Tawadros, a dealer who ran Habib and Company opposite Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo from at least 1936, and that his heirs exported it to Switzerland in 1971 with the authorisation of the Egyptian Antiquities Organization. Tawadros was a real dealer. In 1971 Simon Simonian was stripped of his Egyptian antiquities licence for registering the Tawadros shop in his own name, and the same Tawadros ownership story was later attached to a Tutankhamun stele sold to the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The Manhattan District Attorney's office concluded the documentation was forged. - **October 2011-late 2012** Looters, then Mohammed Jaradat, known as Abu Said, Jordan `[disputed]` (looting and first sale) A looter sent six photographs of the coffin, still encrusted with dirt, to Jaradat in late 2011 and early 2012; one showed a man in a hooded top crouched on a dune with an assault rifle across his chest. Jaradat offered the coffin to the Lebanese collector Georges Lotfi for 50,000 dollars and was refused. This link rests on emails seized under warrant in 2013 and on Jaradat's own account; no court has tried it. - **late 2012-2015** Roben Dib and Serop Simonian; Dubai, then a warehouse in Cologne `[disputed]` (smuggling and restoration) Prosecutors say the coffin left Egypt for Dubai and was sent on by FedEx to a shipping agent near Cologne, declared on the airway bill as a gypsum wooden box and lid from Turkey with a value of 5,000 euros. It was restored while in Germany; no restorer has been named publicly. In a Gmail exchange of September 2012 quoted in the summary of the Manhattan grand jury investigation, Simonian asked when the big yellow one was going to arrive and Dib answered that it would be ready for the EU in early October. Both men deny wrongdoing. - **2015-July 2017** Christophe Kunicki, Paris, with Richard Semper `[documented]` (brokerage and sale) Dib showed Kunicki the coffin in the Cologne warehouse in 2015. Kunicki had it professionally photographed and emailed the pictures in May 2016 to Diana Craig Patch, the Metropolitan's curator in charge of Egyptian art. Kunicki was the seller of record. He and Semper were charged in France in 2020 with fraud, money laundering and forgery, and deny wrongdoing. - **July 2017-February 2019** The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (purchase) Bought for 3.5 million euros, about four million dollars, and accessioned as 2017.255a and 2017.255b. Announced on 12 September 2017. Exhibited as the centrepiece of Nedjemankh and His Gilded Coffin from 20 July 2018; the exhibition was scheduled to run to 21 April 2019 and was closed on 12 February 2019. - **February 2019-25 September 2019** Seized under a New York County search warrant; custody of the Manhattan District Attorney's office and Homeland Security Investigations `[documented]` (seizure) A judge was satisfied that the museum was likely in possession of stolen property in the first degree. Agents executed a search warrant and removed the coffin from display. The museum did not contest the seizure and no criminal charge was brought against anyone at the museum. - **25 September 2019-present** Arab Republic of Egypt `[documented]` (repatriation) Handed to the Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sameh Shoukry, at a ceremony in New York attended by District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr and Peter C. Fitzhugh of Homeland Security Investigations. Unveiled at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in el-Fustat, Cairo, on 1 October 2019. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - This coffin has never been offered at auction and has no hammer price. The 3.5 million euros the Metropolitan Museum paid in July 2017 was a private treaty purchase from a dealer, a negotiated figure with no underbidder, no premium and no public record of what the seller had paid. Every dollar figure in circulation - most often four million - is a conversion of the euro price at an unstated date, and the euro figure is the real one. ## Open questions - Where exactly was the coffin found? Prosecutors place the looting in the Minya region on photograph metadata and Abusir el-Meleq has also been proposed. No tomb has been identified and no assemblage recorded, so the burial context is permanently lost. - What became of the mummy of Nedjemankh? A coffin of this quality contained a body. Nothing in any account consulted says what happened to it, or whether anything else came out of the same burial. - Who restored the coffin in Germany between about 2012 and 2015, and what was done to it? No restorer has been named and no conservation report is public. - Did the Metropolitan Museum recover any part of the 3.5 million euros? The museum said in 2019 that it would consider all available remedies and has filed a complaint in the French criminal proceedings. No outcome has been published. - What is the exact date in February 2019 of the search warrant and the seizure? Accounts give the month; the day has not been found in any source consulted. - Will anyone stand trial? Charges in France date from 2020 and 2022, the principal accused left the country for Hamburg in December 2024 and no trial date has been published as at August 2026. - Is the coffin on public display at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in 2026? The last confirmed event is the unveiling of 1 October 2019. - How many visitors saw the exhibition? One account gives nearly half a million for a show that ran from 20 July 2018 to 12 February 2019. The museum has not published an audited figure in any source consulted. - Who authored the forged licence, and does the original template exist? French investigators identified a typewriter used to fabricate early twentieth-century sales records, but no source consulted attributes this specific document to a named hand. ## Sources - [1] U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations, press release, 'Ancient gold coffin repatriated to Egypt in New York ceremony', 26 September 2019. Primary source for the February 2019 search warrant and seizure, the route through the United Arab Emirates and Germany, the 3.5 million euro value and the quotations from Cyrus R. Vance Jr and Peter C. Fitzhugh. Consulted in the Internet Archive capture of 27 September 2019 because ice.gov returns 403 to direct requests. - [2] Ariel Sabar, 'The Mystery of the Golden Coffin', The Atlantic, 13 May 2026. The fullest published account, drawing on the summary of the Manhattan grand jury investigation, French police files and interviews; source for the Kamrin and Patch emails, the three ownership stories, the Arab Republic of Egypt stamp, the 1961 and 1971 dates, the FedEx declaration, the Lotfi and Jaradat sequence and the status of the French proceedings. - [3] Art-Law Centre, University of Geneva, ArThemis case note, 'Nedjemankh and his Gilded Coffin - Metropolitan Museum of Art and Egypt'. Source for Daniel Weiss's statement, the museum's undertaking to consider all available remedies, the response given on behalf of Kunicki's office, and the relation of the claimed 1971 export date to Egyptian Law No. 117 of 1983. - [4] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, press release, 'Metropolitan Museum Acquires Ancient Egyptian Gilded Coffin', 12 September 2017. The museum's own published provenance - 'Officially exported from Egypt in 1971, the coffin has since resided in a private collection' - and its description of the inscription linking gold and electrum to the flesh of the gods. Consulted in the Internet Archive because metmuseum.org returns 429 to direct requests. - [5] The Art Newspaper, 'Met hands over an Egyptian coffin that it says was looted', 15 February 2019. Source for the purchase price of 3.5 million euros, the July 2017 date, the identification of Kunicki as seller and the museum's statement that it was pursuing remedies against the dealer. - [6] Wikipedia, 'Coffin of Nedjemankh'. TERTIARY, used only for the physical description, the accession numbers, the inscription content, the exhibition dates and the 1 October 2019 unveiling at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. To be replaced with the Metropolitan Museum's Department of Egyptian Art Annals volume 4 (2017-18) entry on the coffin and with an Egyptian ministry statement on its current display. - [7] The Art Newspaper, 'Alleged head of Egyptian antiquities trafficking ring leaves France amid breakdown in criminal investigation', 27 March 2025. Source for Simonian's release in December 2024, the successful prosecution appeal and his departure to Hamburg. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. 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