France has agreed to return Egyptian art after the two countries have been at odds over who rightfully owns the ancient Egyptian artifacts. French Minister of Culture and Communication, Frederic Mitterrand, announced on Friday that five painted segments of an ancient Egyptian tomb mural will be returned as part of France’s interest in fighting the illegal trafficking of cultural and art objects.

Mitterrand also emphasized that the Louvre acquired the objets d’art in between 2000 and 2003. In 2008, a tomb of a prince was discovered that dated to the XVIIIth dynasty in the Valley of the Kings at Luxor. It is believed that the tomb fragments, or steles, were stolen from that tomb in the 1980s. Since the time of that discovery, the Egyptian government has taken the most aggressive stance they have ever taken to recover ancient relics.

On October 7, 2009, Egypt’s antiquities department announced that Egypt was severing ties with the Louvre. This move would jeopardize the Louvre’s future excavations in Egypt. A committee recommended the tomb segments be returned to Egypt and Mitterrand immediately accepted their recommendation and said they would be returned immediately. Egypt has made it clear that relations between their antiquities department and the Louvre will not be restored until the fragments are returned.

Egypt’s antiquities chief Zahi Hawass is the country’s chief archaeologist and has lead the campaign to get those and other artifacts returned to Egypt. He explained that the fragments are pieces of a burial fresco, missing from the tomb that was discovered in 2008. The mural depicts the journey to the afterlife of the nobleman Tetaki.

Hawass is also aggressively seeking to have returned other ancient relics that have been in museums around the world. The Louvre also has a painted ceiling showing the Zodiac from a temple at Dendera. The St. Louis Art Museum has a 3,200-year-old golden burial mask of a noblewoman and Hawass has cut ties with that museum. He wants the Rosetta Stone, which is in the possession of The British Museum in London and Nefertiti’s bust which is in the possession of the Egyptian Museum of Berlin.