The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities said on Sunday that Egypt has received a 3,400-year-old statue depicting the head of King Ramses II after it was stolen and smuggled out of the country more than three decades ago.

The statue is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo but is not on display. The ministry stated in a statement that the artifact will be restored.

The statue was stolen from the temple of Ramses II in the archaeological city of Abydos in southern Egypt over three decades ago; the exact date is unknown, but Shaaban Abdel Gawad, head of Egypt's Antiquities Repatriation Department, said estimates indicate that the piece was stolen in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

The Egyptian authorities spotted the artifact when it was offered for sale at an exhibition in London in 2013. It moved to several other countries before reaching Switzerland, according to the Ministry of Antiquities.

Abdel Gawad said, "This head is part of a group of statues depicting King Ramses II seated alongside a number of Egyptian gods."

Ramses II is one of the most powerful pharaohs of ancient Egypt. He is also known as Ramses the Great and was the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt, ruling from 1279 to 1213 BC.

Egypt collaborated with Swiss authorities to prove its legal ownership. Switzerland handed the statue over to the Egyptian embassy in Bern last year, but Egypt only recently returned the artifact to its homeland.