Nineteen artifacts taken from the tomb of the famed boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun will be returned to Egypt next week after more than half a century at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Egypt's antiquities authority said Saturday.
The trove includes a miniature bronze dog and a sphinx-shaped bracelet ornament, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said in a statement.
The move, scheduled for Tuesday, is the result of an agreement between the two institutions last year to return the objects to Egypt.
At the time, then-antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said the objects would become part of the permanent King Tut collection at the new Grand Egyptian Museum, which is under construction near the Giza pyramids and is scheduled to open in 2012.
Hawass, once the most public face of Egyptian archaeology, was fired earlier this month after intense criticism of his close ties to ex-President Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in February in a popular uprising.
The antiquities authority said the pieces were sent to New York in 1948 when the Metropolitan Museum closed its expedition house in Egypt.
The decision to repatriate the objects came after an extensive examination of the validity of their origin.
