One of Vincent Van Gogh's most famous paintings, Poppy Flowers, was recovered late Saturday, shortly after it was stolen from a museum in Cairo, Egypt's Ministry of Culture said, dpa reported.
In was not immediately clear how the thieves managed to steal the painting from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum, but Culture Minister Farouq Hosni ordered urgent measures to prevent it being taken out of the country when the theft was reported.
The artwork was confiscated from two suspects at a Cairo airport late Saturday, the minister said, hours after it was reported missing from the museum.
The same painting was stolen in 1978 but returned shortly afterward. One year later, a duplicate was sold for 43 million dollars in London, sparking a debate in Egypt about whether the returned painting was, in fact, a fake.
The museum is named after Mohammed Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Egyptian politician who purchased the 1915 Nile-side mansion with his French wife. The couple were passionate art collectors.
The museum, inaugurated in 1962, nine years after Khalil's death, houses a collection of 208 items, among them works by Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and Rodin.