Mummy for sale
2003-10-03 21:49
Cairo - Egyptian police have caught a man trying to sell a 2 500 year-old mummy to pay off a loan he took to buy a tractor, the Al-Wafd newspaper reported on Friday.
The suspect is a pick-up truck driver who had bought the 160-centimetre mummy for the equivalent of $7 000 from a man who discovered it in the Western desert three months ago, the daily said.
He thought he could sell the mummy to smugglers or collectors for up to two million dollars, and toured the upscale neighbourhoods of Cairo and the roads near the famous pyramids with the mummy in his truck, looking for a customer.
But as no one took him up, he gradually lowered his expectations. At the end "he was willing to sell it for a song, just to pay off a tractor loan," said Al-Wafd.
The police acted on a tipoff and arrested him with two other men who were helping him find a customer. The man who discovered the mummy, reportedly a lawyers, remained at large.