Opportunistic burglar almost walks away with priceless Egyptian artefacts.
Early Friday morning, a 52-year-old man smashed through the Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology, north of Brisbane, and pocketed countless ancient artefacts.
Among the valuable burial items was a 2,600 year old cat sculpture, a mummy mask and a necklace. Ageing between 3000 to 5000 years old, the items are incredibly valuable and evidently worth a lot of money.
This led local police to assume these were the actions of an organised crime gang.
However, Detective Inspector David Harbison later realised it was “actually quite amateurish” and not the Ocean’s Eleven sting we were imagining.
The man’s Toyota was parked at a ferry terminal and contained most of the missing artefacts inside. But one remained – the wooden cat sculpture, hailing from the 26th dynasty of Ancient Egypt.
Following a weekend-long man-hunt, the man was found on a nearby island south-east of Brisbane – with the cat in his bag.
He was arrested on Sunday and charged with breaking and entering, and three counts of wilful damage, though his exact motivations are not yet known.
Harbison alleges the heist was not for financial gain or involved pre-planning, it merely presented “as an opportunistic matter for him.”
An ancient wooden cat is a very opportunist matter, personally.
It seems high-end heists are coming back in fashion, following the great jewel robbery of the Louvre Museum in 2025. The stolen items of which are still in limbo, except for the squashed and abandoned Empress Eugénie crown.
For the Caboolture museum, their artefacts have been returned and will be back on display soon following minor restoration.
