CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt threatened on Thursday to remove its antiquities from a Swiss exhibition unless the gallery withdrew a parallel show of photographs that Cairo thought made Egypt look dirty.

Government antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said he faxed the ultimatum on Thursday to the Pierre Gianadda Foundation in the Swiss town of Martigny, where an exhibition entitled Offerings to the Gods of Egypt opened on Monday.

If the foundation did not comply, Hawass's Supreme Council of Antiquities would boycott the foundation and send no antiquities to any Swiss exhibition indefinitely, he told Reuters.

The Egyptian government does not control most of the ancient objects on show because they come from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York but it can withdraw the four items it did contribute, he said.

The parallel exhibition is of about 100 photographs of Egypt by photographer Monique Jacot.

Hawass said he had not seen them himself but the Egyptian ambassador to Switzerland told him they included pictures of a dead buffalo in the River Nile and ducks and chickens walking in a dirty area.

"The photographs are not that bad and I myself never object to any photographs that are against Egypt ... but Egyptians are very sensitive and on an issue like this they should respect the feelings of the people," he added.

"I am not objecting that these things do not exist. They do exist and we are not a super country. We are still developing."

The Egyptian threat follows an attack on the photographs this week in the pro-government newspaper Rose el-Youssef.

The Gianadda Foundation is one of Switzerland's top attractions for blockbuster art exhibitions from the world's leading public and private galleries.