CAIRO The 3,000 year-old grey granite head of an Egyptian queen -- probably Queen Nefertari -- and papyrus sculls were flown back to Egypt from London early Saturday following the discovery that they were stolen in the 1990s, AFP reported.

The artefacts were stolen from Egypt in one of the country's biggest antiquities smuggling cases and recovered in Britain with the help of Scotland Yard, an antiquities official said.

The life-sized stone head of the 19th dynasty queen (1295-1106 B.C.), and six worn pieces of papyrus from the later Greco-Roman period were brought back here by Gaballah Ali Gaballah, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

"We believe she was Queen Nefertari herself on stylistic grounds," Gaballah told reporters at the VIP lounge in Cairo Airport, holding an attache case with the papyrus and standing next to a wooden crate containing the statue head.

Nefertari was married to the Pharaoh, Rameses II.

Though her exact identity was not certain, Gaballah dismissed earlier suggestions that the statue represented a queen merit, of which he said there is no record anyway.

Egyptian police then escorted the head and the papyrus scrolls -- bearing demotic, Greek and Coptic script -- to the Egyptian museum in downtown Cairo, which was to open to tourists later in the day.

The head was stolen from a storage area in Saqqara, just south of Cairo, in 1992 or 1993, Gaballah said.

"To be smuggled out of Egypt, the head was faked so that it would look modern, it would look as if it was a replica. But of course that was proven wrong," following testing at the British museum in London, Gaballah said.

Nine Egyptians, including members of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, were tried in 1997 in Cairo in connection with the case and sentenced to forced labor terms running from five to 15 years.

Jonathan Tokeley-Parry, an art restorer from the English county of Devon, was meanwhile sentenced in Britain to six years in prison for his role in the network.

Some other artefacts stolen by the ring have already been brought back to Egypt and Gaballah said he was expecting the return soon of a head representing a Pharaoh.

Egypt has, in the last few years, recovered stolen antiquities from Jordan and Tunisia and is now seeking the return of stolen artefacts from New York.

"The most important thing here is the principle of the matter, that if something is stolen from you, you never give up," despite all the legal and other costs, Gaballah said.