The Pharaoh of the Exodus Receives Back His Hair Stolen in France

This mighty pharaoh has been linked to the events counted in the Bible about the Jews' exodus from Egypt and was confronted by Moses.

Ramses II (1270 to 1213 B.C.) was even more known as one of the greatest military leaders of the Ancient Egypt and builder of some of the largest Egyptian monuments.

Now, locks of 3,200-year-old hair from this pharaoh' head adornments were displayed at the Egyptian Museum on Tuesday, alongside with linen bandages and 11 pieces of resin employed in the mummification of the pharaoh and his son Merneptah, 30 years after being stolen in France.

The hair will finally be displayed next to Ramses' mummy.

The theft was spotted when the hair pieces were put up for sale on Internet last November by a French postman, Jean-Michel Diebolt, who estimated the hair at $2,600 and is now under penal investigation for possession of stolen goods.

He is the son of a French scientists who worked on the mummy when this reached France in 1976 for treatment against a rare fungus attack. "It was wonderful mission. I felt very great when I had the lock of hair of Ramses II in my hand," said Egyptian antiquities official Ahmed Saleh, who recovered the stolen items from Paris. "The retrieval of the items was made possible by the strong diplomatic relations between Egypt and France." said Zahi Hawass, Egypt's antiquities chief. "The Internet is playing an important role in the search for other stolen relics. We open the Internet everyday, and the most important source you have are my spies," Hawass said.

"I have spies all over the world, and those spies, they inform me every day of things you would not believe."

Hawass has pressed several countries to return the Egyptian antiquities, but he has been unsuccessful in recovering the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum, the bust of Nefertiti at Berlin's Egyptian Museum and a pharaonic mask at the St. Louis Art Museum. "Egypt is awaiting the arrival of a statue coming from Spain, another artifact from Mexico and duck-shaped lamps that were stolen from Saqqara and will be retrieved from Paris", he announced. "When one country gives you back your artifact, other countries will do the same", added Saleh.