Egypt has recovered 20 ancient artifacts displayed at an Australian auction house.

The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has received a total of 20 archaeological pieces from different periods of Ancient Egypt that were on display at an Australian auction house in collaboration with the authorities of the Oceanian country after certifying that there was no documentation regarding their ownership .

"The pieces were on display at a renowned Australian auction house , and when it became clear that there were no ownership documents for them, the auction house's management cooperated with the Egyptian Embassy in Canberra to return them to Egypt," said Mohamed Ismail Khaled, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, in a statement.

He noted that the recovered artifacts date from various periods in ancient Egypt and include small statues, including an ushabti statue, part of a wooden coffin shaped like a human hand, a wooden snake head, a ceramic lamp, ivory spindles, an Eye of the Face amulet, and a piece of Coptic textile.

The director general of Egypt's General Administration of Antiquities Repatriation, Shaban Abdelyauad, added in the statement that some of the pieces were delivered to the Egyptian Consulate General in Sydney , including part of an ancient stele belonging to Seshen Nefertem.

"This tablet was previously discovered by an Italian mission , broken into four pieces, some of which disappeared during an inventory in 1995," he noted.

He explained that three of the pieces were returned to Egypt from Switzerland in 2017 , while the fourth was recently returned by the Macquarie Museum in Australia, immediately after it was confirmed to belong to the same tablet.

The pieces, which arrived in the Egyptian capital, were deposited at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir for restoration and preparation for display in a temporary exhibition.

Last Monday, Egypt, in collaboration with US authorities, recovered a total of 25 artifacts dating back up to 3,300 years that had been smuggled from New York.

Egypt is working to prevent the smuggling of antiquities and historical heritage from the country and is making extensive diplomatic efforts to recover stolen objects, which are in private collections around the world, in gambling houses, and even in museums.

According to the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, any object acquired and removed from a country without a legal export document after that date is considered illegal.

That is, any piece that left Egypt after 1970 and does not have an export certificate is presumed stolen by default.