Seventy-one years ago, a schoolboy in Scotland was digging up potatoes as a punishment when he discovered an ancient Egyptian statue — the first in a collection of ancient Egyptian sculptures and artifacts buried in the grounds of his school. Now, researchers have finally worked out how the artifacts got to the British Isles.
Between 1952 and 1984, several antique statues were found on the grounds of Melville House — a stately building in Fife county that lodged soldiers during World War II and later served as a boarding school. Teachers and pupils brought each new discovery to museum curators and experts, who identified the statues as ancient Egyptian artifacts, but no one could figure out how they had ended up there.
