Photo Gallery Egypt's Grave Robbers
The Dahshur pyramids are the oldest in the world. Situated less than hour away from the Egyptian capital, the site has become a popular destination for professional plunderers.
Several hundred meters away from Dahshur's famous Black Pyramid, dozens of burial tombs, untouched for millenia, lie open and ransacked of their contents. Mounds of earth signal the location of the excavation.
Some of the tunnels are up to seven meters (23 feet) deep -- the one pictured here shows traces left by the robbers, who usually dig under the cover of darkness.
Aside from the the recent grave robberies, the ancient tombs face another threat -- local villagers are in the process of expanding their cemetary onto Pharaonic territory.
Though tomb raiding in Egypt dates back to antiquity, the political chaos that has gripped the country since its 2011 revolution has been seen by many as an open invitation to loot antiquities without fear of reprisal.
Several ancients artifacts have also been looted from Egyptian museums. Pictured here is a limestone statue of Akhenaten holding an offering table, which was stolen from Cairo's Egyptian Museum in January.
An inventory showed that a total of 18 artifacts had been removed from the museum, including this gilded wooden statue of King Tutankhamun being carried by a goddess.
Another wooden gilded statue of the pharaoh is still partly intact. "We have the boat and the legs of the king," says the director of the Egyptian Museum, "but the rest of the statue is missing."
Unidentified mummies were found damaged on the museum floor after looters entered the building via a glass dome on the roof.
