Bizzoe

In 2018, Kim Kardashian posed beside a $4 million Egyptian coffin, helping expose that it had actually been stolen. One of the men who’d looted it recognised the coffin in her viral photo. He still hadn’t been paid. The photograph was taken at the 2018 Met Gala, where Kardashian’s gold dress matched the gilded coffin of Nedjemankh, an ancient Egyptian priest. According to Manhattan prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos, the furious looter contacted an informant, who connected him with investigators. The coffin had been stolen from Egypt in 2011, then moved through dealers using a fabricated ownership history and a forged export licence claiming it had legally left Egypt in 1971. The Metropolitan Museum of Art bought it in 2017. By 2019, the investigation had exposed the fraud. The coffin was returned to Egypt, and the Met’s chief executive apologised to the Egyptian people.