The quest to regain Egypt's antiquities

Later this month Egyptian archaeologists will travel to the Louvre Museum in Paris to collect five ancient fresco fragments stolen from a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in the 1980s, but there are many other "stolen" antiquities which they also want back, reports the BBC's Yolande Knell in Cairo.

Thousands of artefacts were spirited out of Egypt during the period of colonial rule and afterwards by archaeologists, adventurers and thieves.

According to a 1972 United Nations agreement, artefacts are the property of their country of origin and pieces smuggled out must be returned.

Egypt also pursues items taken before that time if it has evidence of illegal practices. However, the process of determining whether an item has ever been stolen can be laborious and complicated.

A red granite fragment returned last month was an exceptional case.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art bought the piece from an antiques collector in New York so that it could be returned to a shrine in the Ptah temple at Karnak, near Luxor.