The world is obsessed with the jewels stolen from the Louvre, but forget a few crowns! Across the Arab world, thousands of years of precious history, from pharaonic gold to ancient civilization tablets, have been stolen or vanished in bold, high-stakes heists.

1. The $50 Million Van Gogh That Vanished (Egypt)

In August 2010, the painting Poppy Flowers by the renowned artist Vincent Van Gogh was stolen from Cairo's Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum. This was the second time the painting had been stolen from the same museum (the first was in 1977).

The painting was cut from its frame in broad daylight, and investigators found that only a few of the museum’s approximately 40 security cameras were working. Several Ministry of Culture officials were later convicted of negligence. The painting remains completely missing, a chilling testament to unbelievable security failures.

2. The Great Babylon Bulldozing (Iraq)

In April 2003, more than 15,000 items were systematically looted from the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, and the crimes extended far beyond the capital.

Looting gangs targeted ancient archaeological sites such as the Sumerian city of Umma, using bulldozers and heavy machinery to harvest thousands of cuneiform tablets, cylinder seals, and other artifacts. These industrial-scale thefts erased thousands of years of archaeological context to supply the black market.

3. The Golden Coffin That Landed in the Metropolitan Museum (Egypt)

A magnificently decorated coffin of the priest Nedjemankh (1st century BC) was illegally excavated from the Minya region of Egypt in 2011 and smuggled out of the country.

The coffin’s long journey ended at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it was purchased for $4 million and displayed as a centerpiece in a 2018 exhibition. Following a major international investigation, it was proven that the museum had been deceived by a forged 1971 export license, and the coffin was repatriated to Egypt in 2019.

4. The Theft of Ancient Quran Manuscripts (Yemen)

In July 2015, the National Museum in Taiz was targeted, and valuable documents were stolen, including rare handwritten copies of the Quran.

The museum’s security failures allowed criminals to take these rare manuscripts, which later surfaced in the possession of organized smuggling networks attempting to move the treasures across borders. In January 2020, two 800-year-old Quran manuscripts stolen from the Taiz Museum were recovered, exposing a sophisticated network trafficking Yemen’s literary heritage.

5. The Vanished Gold of the Napatan Kings (Sudan)

Starting in April 2023, the National Museum in Khartoum, which houses artifacts from the 3,000-year-old Kingdom of Kush, was raided and systematically stripped of its most valuable contents.

Looters targeted the famous “Gold Room,” stealing the entire collection of solid-gold royal jewelry, statues, and ceremonial objects of the Napatan pharaohs. These artifacts, some dating back to the 9th century BC, vanished instantly into the global black market, effectively erasing the priceless golden record of one of Africa’s oldest empires.