François Pinault, owner of Christie's, has been informed by experts of the Louvre museum that the Egyptian stone statue of Sesostris III he bought at Drouot on November 10th 1998 for a record price of 5,1 million FF ($ 761,190) for any archaelogical piece sold in France was genuine. Pinault was told on February 25th 2000 that he should have no doubt about the authenticity of the 57 high statue despite the opinion delivered after the sale by the curator of the Berlin museum that it was a fake, an assertion which fuelled a controversy relayed by the press.
Pinault thus asked a court to order a close examination of the statue to be carried out by experts from the Louvre who finally concluded that this work was the sole known representation of Sesostris III produced between the reign of Amenenhat III and Sebekhotep IVb, that is to say between 1850 and 1720 B.-C. They added that this statue had a great historical value.
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