This article adds some juice to the dry announcement of the eye’s return.

Zawi Hawass himself apparently saw it while he was in town for the Tut exhibit, recognized it right away and negotiated directly with the collector to get it back.

Notice the use of the standard “in good faith” clause. Whenever you see that in conjunction with a returned antiquities, what that actually means is that the originating country won’t prosecute the collector for buying stolen goods.

It’s not a genuine assessment of the collector’s approach to purchasing antiquities, which more often that not is better described as “avoiding the dirty reality because they like old stuff.”