Three Germans, six Egyptians jailed for stealing pharaonic fragments from Giza pyramid

An Egyptian court has sentenced three Germans and six Egyptians to five years in jail for stealing fragments of a pharaonic artefact from Cairo's Great Pyramid.

A court in Giza, south of the capital, on Tuesday had sentenced in absentia three Germans - who had claimed they were researchers - for stealing pieces of an ancient scroll bearing the name of the Pharaoh Khufu as well as rock samples, a judicial source said.

The Great Pyramid - also known as the Pyramid of Cheops - is the biggest and most famous of the three Giza pyramids. It houses the tomb of Pharaoh Khufu, and is the only surviving one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Six Egyptians - three employees of the antiquities ministry, two pyramid guards and the director of a travel agency - had also been jailed for five years, the source said.

The crime was discovered at the end of last year by Egyptian authorities, who announced in August that the missing fragments had been recovered.

The judicial source said that the German researchers had taken the scroll pieces in order to determine their age and bolster an unorthodox theory that the pyramids may be much older than the construction period accepted by most Egyptologists.