The Egyptian Museum reported that 18 artifacts, including statues of King Tutankhamun, are missing after a break-in last month, according to Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
The police and army are following up on the disappearances with people in custody, Mr Hawass said on his website.
The missing objects include 11 wooden shabti statuettes from Yuya, a gilded wooden statue of Tutankhamun carried by a goddess and a statue of Nefertiti making offerings, according to Hawass. A separate gilded wooden statue of Tutankhamun harpooning, a limestone statue of Akhenaten holding an offering table, a sandstone head of an Amarna princess, a stone statuette of a scribe from Amarna and a heart scarab of Yuya are also missing from the museum in Cairo.
Intruders used ropes to descend from the museum's roof and force their way inside from a fire escape. They broke open 14 display cases in the museum's Late Period and Tutankhamun exhibits, in search of gold.
Finding none, they shattered statures, including one of the ancient goddess Isis, and smashed some of the museum's royal mummies.
Some of the missing objects were especially prized objects that had been on display in cases on the ground floor, said Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at Cairo's American University.
"They are not something you would come and randomly find," Ikram said. "It looks like they could have been targeting the stuff downstairs."
Agencies