... It has now emerged that detectives from the Metropolitan Police's Art and Antiques Unit arrested two Bolton men in the town last week on suspicion of forgery in connection with the statue...

... A spokesman said detectives removed the statue from public display at the gallery in connection with an "ongoing investigation" and revealed "a small number of other items" were also removed from the British Museum in connection with the inquiry...

£500,000 statue in police 'fake' probe, The Manchester Evening News, UK, March 21, 2006.

Archaeologists working in Luxor, Egypt, have unearthed 17 statues of an ancient Egyptian goddess with the head of a lion and the body of a woman.

The Egyptian-German team made the discovery while doing restoration work at the temple of Pharaoh Amenhotep III on the Nile's west bank in southern Egypt.

Six additional statues of the goddess, called Sekhmet, had been found at the same site shortly before this latest discovery...

Click on the photograph, right, for eight pictures of the dig from the Yahoo! News Archaeology and Anthropology slideshow.

Egyptian Temple Yields 17 Statues of Lion-Headed Goddess, National Geographic News, District of Columbia, USA, march 14, 2006.

Britain's Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, are visiting Egypt and have amongst other things visited the Cairo Museum.

Click on the photograph, right, for four pictures of the visit from the Yahoo! News Archaeology and Anthropology slideshow.

Barefoot Camilla wears veil for mosque visit, The Telegraph, UK, March 21, 2006.

cf. British Prince visits Egypt, Xinhua, China, March 21, 2006.

A statue of an Egyptian princess, thought to be 3,300 years old and worth £1million, has been exposed as a fake...

... Councillor Barbara Ronson said: "It has come as a real shock to learn that this is a fake. The people responsible for buying it thought all the necessary checks had been carried out. A police investigation is under way, but it appears that this is related to other fakes in London."

Angela Thomas, [former] keeper of Egyptology at Bolton, said when the statue was bought by the council from a private collector: "Pieces like this are extremely rare."

Two held as '£1m Egyptian statue' is found to be a fake, The Daily Mirror, UK, march 21, 2006.