Egyptian Police Catch Thieves Who Sawed Ancient Statue

CAIRO, Egypt (Reuter) - Egyptian police have captured three men who stormed a museum and sawed in two a unique limestone statue of the Pharaonic goddess Isis, Cairo newspapers said Wednesday.

They said the three farmers held up the guards at a museum for Pharaoh Seti I in Badrasheen town, just south of Cairo, earlier this month.

The masked robbers then sawed off the upper half of the statue, which depicts Isis suckling Seti I, who is sculpted as her son Horus, and made off with it in a car.

The limestone figure is more than 3,500 years old and the upper half weighs 330 pounds.

Police officers posing as antiquities traders captured the men when they were trying to sell the ancient structure.

Seti I ruled around 1318 BC and fathered Ramses II, one of the most prolific and powerful pharaohs of the 19th dynasty.

Seti was a great builder and is well known for his unusual temple at Abydos in southern Egypt.

Reuters/Variety