CAIRO, Egypt (WKRC) – A museum employee was arrested alongside three accomplices for allegedly stealing a 3,000-year-old gold bracelet that belonged to a pharaoh, which they sold for just $4,000 to be melted down.
Workers at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo discovered that a golden bracelet belonging to the pharaoh Amenemope had gone missing while cataloging items that were going to be shipped abroad to other institutions, per The Times.
An urgent investigation was opened to find the missing bracelet before it was smuggled out of the country, resulting in the revelation that a specialist in the museum’s restoration department stole the bracelet and sold it to a silver trader, who sold it to a jewelry workshop, who finally sold it to a gold smelter for it to be melted down, Reuters reported. According to Smithsonian Magazine, the employee that stole the priceless artifact made less than $4,000 on its sale.
All four people involved in the smuggling attempt were arrested and all four admitted guilt, per the Interior Ministry of Egypt.