Cairo: A 35,000 year-old stone axe unearthed with one of the oldest skeletons ever found in Egypt will be repatriated in the coming days after analysis was completed on the artefact in Belgium.

A team of Belgian archaelogists discovered the axe and skeleton, dating from the old archaic era, in upper Egypt and took them back to Louvain University for study, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said.

The find "shows the development of human species that lived in Egypt through the various ages", said Shaaban Abdel Gawad, supervisor of Egypt's general antiquities repatriation department.

--IANS