CAIRO, Sep 18: In a scandal shaking Egypt’s cultural establishment, a 3,000-year-old gold bracelet belonging to one of the nation’s ancient kings has been stolen from a museum, only to be crudely melted down and sold off for a fraction of its priceless worth.

The Interior Ministry revealed on Thursday that the treasured artifact, once adorning the wrist of King Amenemope — who ruled during Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period around 1,000 BC — was swiped earlier this month and destroyed in what officials are calling a “catastrophic act of cultural vandalism.”

The ornate bracelet, adorned with striking lapis lazuli beads, vanished from a supposedly secure safe inside a conservation laboratory on September 9. Fearing it had been smuggled abroad, frantic officials rushed images of the missing treasure to airports, seaports, and border crossings across the country.

But the truth proved more humiliating. Investigators traced the theft back not to shadowy smugglers, but to a museum restoration specialist — entrusted with safeguarding Egypt’s ancient treasures — who instead pocketed the bracelet. He allegedly sold it to a silver trader, who passed it on to a jeweler in Cairo’s historic Khan el-Khalili district. From there, the piece was delivered to a gold smelter who melted it down, erasing three millennia of history in minutes.

Authorities say the conspirators pocketed just 194,000 Egyptian pounds — barely £3,200 ($4,000) — for a jewel that scholars regard as irreplaceable. The suspects have since been arrested, and investigators seized the proceeds from the sale, though the bracelet itself is gone forever.

The shocking theft comes at a sensitive moment for Egypt, just weeks before the highly anticipated opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum near the Pyramids of Giza — a project billed as the crown jewel of the country’s tourism industry, and a showcase of its unmatched ancient heritage.

“This is a crime not just against Egypt, but against humanity’s history,” one antiquities official said.