Recent returns — sixty-seven artefacts cleared back to Cairo since June 2025.
The Friday returns log of Egyptian artefacts that have been cleared back through Port Said or Alexandria customs in the past twelve months. Each entry shows the returning institution, the customs-clearance date, the dispatch date for context, and any in-transit notes (damage incidents, re-inventory discrepancies, or expedited returns ahead of contractual schedule).
Twenty most-recent returns.
| Inv. ID | Object | Returned from | Cleared | Dispatched | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EAA-2022-471 | Cleopatra coin hoard (41 spec.) | Australian Museum, Sydney | 08 Apr 2026 | 14 Mar 2022 | — |
| EAA-2023-218 | Wooden funerary mask | Munich State Museum | 02 Apr 2026 | 22 Sep 2023 | — |
| EAA-2022-389 | Coffin of Maatkare, Twenty-first | Louvre Museum, Paris | 25 Mar 2026 | 30 Nov 2022 | Minor reinstall noted |
| EAA-2024-052 | Limestone stela | Petrie Museum, UCL London | 18 Mar 2026 | 06 Mar 2024 | — |
| EAA-2023-117 | Statuette of Bes | Vatican Museums, Rome | 11 Mar 2026 | 10 May 2023 | — |
| EAA-2022-308 | Painted cartonnage fragments | British Museum, London | 26 Feb 2026 | 18 Aug 2022 | Re-inventory complete |
| EAA-2023-291 | Faience shabti group (18) | Ashmolean Museum, Oxford | 19 Feb 2026 | 14 Nov 2023 | — |
| EAA-2022-114 | Bronze ibis, Late Period | Metropolitan Museum, NY | 12 Feb 2026 | 22 Mar 2022 | Extended once, returned |
| EAA-2023-156 | Demotic ostracon group (9) | Bibliothèque nationale, Paris | 05 Feb 2026 | 22 Jun 2023 | — |
| EAA-2024-022 | Painted wood headrest | Egyptian Museum of Berlin | 22 Jan 2026 | 06 Feb 2024 | — |
| EAA-2022-208 | Statue base, Amenhotep III | Brooklyn Museum, NY | 15 Jan 2026 | 11 May 2022 | — |
| EAA-2023-377 | Predynastic cosmetic palette | Penn Museum, Philadelphia | 30 Dec 2025 | 21 Dec 2023 | — |
| EAA-2022-491 | Stone scarab, Eighteenth Dynasty | Boston Museum of Fine Arts | 17 Dec 2025 | 02 Apr 2022 | — |
| EAA-2023-053 | Faience necklace, New Kingdom | Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto | 03 Dec 2025 | 14 Mar 2023 | — |
| EAA-2022-072 | Limestone relief, Akhenaten | Neues Museum, Berlin | 20 Nov 2025 | 22 Feb 2022 | Extension renewed, returned on revised date |
| EAA-2023-244 | Wooden funerary stelae (2) | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston | 06 Nov 2025 | 10 Sep 2023 | — |
| EAA-2024-098 | Bronze figurine of Osiris | Tokyo National Museum | 23 Oct 2025 | 14 Apr 2024 | — |
| EAA-2023-181 | Painted papyrus fragment | Bibliothèque nationale, Paris | 09 Oct 2025 | 22 Jul 2023 | — |
| EAA-2022-261 | Statuette of Sekhmet | Ashmolean Museum, Oxford | 25 Sep 2025 | 14 Jun 2022 | — |
| EAA-2023-298 | Cartonnage mummy mask | Museo Egizio, Turin | 11 Sep 2025 | 20 Nov 2023 | — |
The full twelve-month returns log has sixty-seven entries. The mean time between contractual return date and actual customs-clearance date is 23 days; the median is 11 days. Six returns took more than ninety days past contractual; one took two hundred and fourteen days. The full list with the documented reasons for delayed returns is in the Newsroom-and-above quarterly CSV export.
Returns versus dispute escalation.
A late return is not a dispute. The dispute-watch criteria — twelve months past contractual return without a published extension — are deliberately conservative. Most late returns reflect shipping logistics (Port Said customs backlogs, expedited routings via Suez or Alexandria when the canal is congested), receiving-museum reinstallation delays, or in-transit inspection holds. The desk records each late return with the documented reason where the reason is publicly available; where the reason is not publicly available, the entry shows "—" and the desk does not speculate.
The Cleopatra coin hoard return — a model case.
The April 2026 return of the Cleopatra coin hoard (forty-one Ptolemaic and early Roman provincial silver tetradrachms) from the Australian Museum to Cairo is the desk's model case for a well-handled loan cycle. Dispatched in March 2022, extended once in 2024 with full published agreement, returned to Cairo via Singapore freight in April 2026, and re-inventoried at Tahrir with all forty-one specimens confirmed in the condition documented at dispatch. The loan agreement, the extension agreement, the customs-clearance documentation and the re-inventory note were all published in some form. The Australian Museum's registrar's office and the EAA's loans office both used the cycle as a teaching example in their respective 2026 staff training programmes.
Customs-clearance timing notes.
The desk's working knowledge of Port Said and Alexandria customs clearance suggests three rule-of-thumb timing patterns that journalists and researchers find useful. First, returns from European receiving museums typically clear customs within five working days of arrival at the port, because the documentation chain is established and the receiving customs broker is usually a known partner. Second, returns from North American institutions take longer to clear — usually nine to fourteen working days — because the documentation chain runs through New York, Frankfurt or Amsterdam before arriving at the Egyptian port, and the multi-stop chain produces incidental customs paperwork at each transit point. Third, returns from Asia-Pacific institutions typically clear in seven to ten days because the shipping route is more direct (usually via Singapore or Dubai) and the documentation chain is shorter. The watch's records do not show systematic differences in re-inventory time across the three groups; the customs-clearance differences disappear once the objects reach the EAA's central inventory facility in Cairo.
The complete returns log is available in the Newsroom CSV export. The current dispute-watch shows what late returns look like when they escalate beyond ordinary logistics. The lender-museums list identifies the receiving institutions.