After Macron’s approval, can Egypt recover its stolen artifacts from France?

French President Emmanuel Macron’s ratification of a bill allowing looted or stolen artifacts to be returned to their countries of origin has reopened the debate over the fate of thousands of Egyptian antiquities in France, especially those housed in the Louvre.

The decision comes amid mounting international pressure to return cultural property taken during occupation and colonial rule. It revives long-standing Egyptian demands for artifacts removed in the 19th and early 20th centuries through official gifts or networks of consuls and foreign dealers.

The Louvre in the dock

Dr. Shaaban Abdel Gawad, former director-general of the General Administration for the Repatriation of Antiquities, told Al Manassa that the Permanent Committee for Egyptian Antiquities suspended permits for Louvre missions after names connected to those missions appeared in French investigations tied to the theft of Egyptian artifacts.

French authorities opened an investigation in 2022 into the purchase of Egyptian artifacts suspected of having been smuggled after 2011 for the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The case included accusations against former Louvre president Jean-Luc Martinez and several specialists in Egyptian antiquities.

“France has stolen more artifacts from Egypt than any other country, and the French are extremely arrogant,” Abdel Gawad told Al Manassa.

Hussein Bassir, an Egyptologist and director of the Antiquities Museum at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, described the French step as “very positive.” He noted that Cairo maintains a substantial list of artifacts it wants to be returned from France, including objects taken from the Dendera Temple and the Seated Scribe statue held at the Louvre.

Bassir told Al Manassa that thousands of artifacts were taken out of Egypt over time, driven by intense competition among European consuls to acquire Egyptian antiquities. France and Britain, he added, top the list of countries holding collections of Egyptian artifacts abroad, noting that the British Museum and the Louvre were formed at a time when antiquities were being removed from Egypt on a wide scale, long before Law 117 of 1983 permanently banned the export of antiquities.

Still, Bassir does not expect any possible path to recover Egyptian artifacts to “empty” the Louvre of its holdings. But he said the museum’s Egyptian wing is one of its most prominent sections, and that recovering parts of those collections “would undoubtedly change the museum.”

Bureaucratic silence in Cairo

Al Manassa contacted Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities for comment and asked whether the government planned to act on the new law, but the ministry declined to comment. Nevine El-Aref, its media advisor, said there were “instructions not to respond to any inquiries related to this file at the current time.” She declined to say who gave the instructions.

She also said the ministry’s legal representatives had not yet received the official text of the French law and were waiting to study it before taking any position. “Until then, you can contact the Foreign Ministry,” she added.

Egypt awaits official text

Assistant Foreign Minister Ambassador Wael El-Naggar told Al Manassa that the French law on the return of looted artifacts “represents a positive step in the right direction.” However, Cairo is still studying its legal implications and implementation mechanisms before commencing any official move to recover Egyptian artifacts from France.

El-Naggar said relevant Egyptian authorities are awaiting the official version through diplomatic channels to determine whether it applies to Egyptian artifacts held in France. An initial reading suggests the law covers the period from 1815 to 1972, while later periods are governed by other international agreements, including the UNESCO convention.

El-Naggar added that Cairo does not want to “rush to take a position or make predictions before understanding the law’s implementation mechanisms.” He added, “Our goal in the end is to recover as many artifacts as possible, because every piece has the same value and importance to us.”

The Louvre’s Egyptian antiquities galleries include more than 6,000 items on display, covering about 5,000 years of ancient Egyptian history. The collection includes the Great Sphinx of Tanis at the section’s entrance, the Seated Scribe, the Mastaba of Akhethotep, the Dendera zodiac from the Temple of Hathor, the coffin of Tamutnefret, and statues linked to rulers including Senusret III, Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and Ramses II.

The galleries also display prominent pieces from the New Kingdom and later periods, as well as dedicated rooms for Roman and Coptic Egypt, containing about 800 artifacts. The collection grew out of the Charles X Museum, the Louvre’s first Egyptian museum, which opened in 1827 under Jean-François Champollion.

A looted history

For Egyptian antiquities specialists, the French decision appeared to offer an opportunity to reopen more sensitive topics that go beyond museum displays to archives and holdings tied to the history of the French campaign itself.

Archaeologist Monica Hanna commented on the decision in a post on her Facebook page, calling for the recovery of artifacts she characterized as “looted” from Egypt. These included objects from the Serapeum, manuscripts taken from Al-Azhar Mosque’s library during the French invasion that are now in the National Library of France, and the skull of Suleiman Al-Halabi held at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, along with the dagger he used to assassinate French General Kléber.

For decades, major European museums have treated such holdings as part of world heritage, while countries of origin describe them as the direct result of unequal power during the colonial era.

In recent years, major European institutions have faced growing pressure to return African and Asian holdings, especially after French and European reports recommended reviewing policies on keeping artifacts that were removed in unfair circumstances or during occupation.

Countries such as Egypt, Greece, and Nigeria have also intensified diplomatic and cultural campaigns in recent years to recover pieces they consider integral to their national identity and history.

The law extends a pledge Macron made in a 2017 speech in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, when he spoke about the need to reconsider France’s relationship with the cultural heritage of formerly colonized countries.

However, the restitution process has remained slow because French public collections are locked into complex legal restrictions that treat museum holdings as “inalienable” property of the state, meaning they cannot normally be sold, given away, or returned without a special parliamentary act, turning every return into a lengthy political and legislative battle rather than an administrative decision. 

The new restitution law aims to bypass part of that gridlock by creating a standardized procedure for returning colonial‑era artifacts looted between 1815 and 1972, but it still leaves many contested items—especially those acquired through older excavation shares or non‑colonial‑era deals—tied to the same rigid property rules.

While the details of implementing the French decision and its legal mechanisms remain unclear, Egyptian antiquities specialists such as Hanna, Bassir, and Abdel Gawad see Macron’s approval as a practical test of whether Paris is willing to move beyond symbolic recognition of its colonial legacy and return artifacts held in its museums and cultural institutions.