The campaign group Save Sekhmeka Group Egypt has stepped in the controversial fight for the valuable ancient Sekhemka statue, urging Egyptian authorities to reclaim the statue as state property and bring it back to the country, according to the BBC .
The statue landed in the United Kingdom in 1850 when Spencer Compton, the second marquis of Northampton, found it during a trip to Egypt. It was later donated to the Northampton Museum around 1870. In July 2014, the statue was sold to an unknown buyer by the Northampton Borough Council for 15.76 million British pounds.
Soon after the extremely controversial sale, an export ban was imposed on the 4,000-year-old statue, which is considered the most exquisite of its type in the world, to stop it from leaving the U.K. and falling into the wrong hands. The ban expired on July 29, leaving the statue's current fate unknown.
Now the Egyptian campaigners, who claim selling the statue is a crime against international law, are reaching out to their own government, calling not for the statue to remain in the U.K., but be brought back to its rightful homeland.
"First, we started a huge media campaign across several media platforms in Egypt and England. Secondly, we contacted both the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Antiquities to help us with the cause," Heba Saad, a member of the Egyptian campaign group, told Daily News Egypt .
Earlier this week, the Egyptian group along with a British campaign group fighting to save the statue urged British Prime Minster David Cameron to intervene in the matter before the ban expired, but to no avail.
According to Saad, both Egyptian ministries were enormously supportive as they helped connect the group with UNESCO in addition to contacting officials in the U.K. Saad said that the British Culture Minister Ed Vaizey told the Egyptian antiquities minister that the statue won't leave the U.K. unless strong evidence proving it as Egyptian property was provided.
"He also stated that even if Egypt buys the statue from the Qatari woman who bought it, they would still keep it in London, and I don’t understand why," added Saad, who claims the statue was sold to a Qatari planning to take it back to Qatar.
The British Department of Culture has said the export ban could be extended until March 2016 if a British buyer expressed a serious intention to purchase the statue, which some are claiming is the only way to save the statue now.
"In the museum, the statue was safe under national law: It is about to leave the protection of a public museum and enter private hands without legal safeguards. We may never see it again," British archeology experts wrote in a letter to The Guardian, adding that archival research could prove that "the sale contravenes international law."