Four people have been arrested – including an antiquities conservator at the Cairo Museum – over the theft of a priceless Pharaonic-era bracelet, which was sold for €3,400 and ultimately melted down in a gold foundry, Egyptian authorities announced today.

The gold bracelet, decorated with a lapis lazuli bead, dated back to the reign of Pharaoh Amenemope of the 21st Dynasty (1070–945 BC). It disappeared from a vault in the restoration workshop of the Cairo Museum, according to the Ministry of Culture.

Egyptian media reported that the jewel had been listed among artifacts scheduled to travel to Rome in October for the exhibition “Treasures of the Pharaohs.”

The investigation revealed that the bracelet was stolen from the museum, sold, and then taken to a foundry where it was melted along with other jewelry, the Interior Ministry said. Surveillance footage released by authorities shows the bracelet being exchanged for a stack of banknotes before the buyer cuts it in half.

The conservator “managed to steal the bracelet while working at the museum,” then contacted a jeweler who sold it to a workshop owner for 180,000 Egyptian pounds (about €3,100). He later sold it to a gold foundry for 194,000 pounds (about €3,400), according to the statement.

The four suspects confessed, and the money was seized.

The bracelet had originally been discovered in Tanis, alongside the golden funerary mask of Pharaoh Amenemope, which remains on display at the Cairo Museum with some 170,000 archaeological artifacts.

In August, former Egyptian doctor Ashraf Omar Eldarir was sentenced to six months in prison in the U.S. for smuggling Egyptian antiquities.