I am not sure we should believe this, but over on the Yahoo Ancient Artifacts discussion list, ebay seller Tim3rexes based in the US confesses that he was the person who dug up the Wenneb shabtis and put some 300 of them on the market. He seems quite unrepentant about it. Whether or not the membership of this discussion list deserves the label "responsible collectors" who take the issue of looting seriously will be shown by the number of people who respond to that remark.More seriously, the same tim3rexes (whose real name might be something like Tim Babb) is visible on the same discussion list "playing devil's advocate" in favour of "Cuneiform tablets/cone for sale". According to him, leaving them in the source countries endangers the artefracts which are better housed in the homes of western collectors (sic). In the same vein, this writer also suggested that the real artefacts should be retained in the west, but auction houses like Christies should collude in the selling of deceptive fake Chinese antiquities to China to keep them quiet. A months ago he wrote: "I guess the Nazi party is alive and well in Germany - although under a different name (cultural authorities=national socialists?)" which is just plain offensive, especially on a "responsible collectors'" discussion list. What was the reaction of the "responsible collectors"? I guess the ensuing silence of collectors was a stunned one, eh? (The same message appeared on that bastion of indiscriminate antiquity collection, Dave Welsh's Unidroit-L discussion list, and was not contested there either.)
From his feedback on eBay, we can see that Tim3rexes is a seller of coins, of course. How could it be otherwise? I wonder if he is a member of the ACCG, I think we should know.
1 comment:
The actual message http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ancientartifacts/message/54063 was: Hi, my name is Seti Wennab and I must confess-the wenneb shabtis came from me. I released about 300 of them on the market a few years ago. unfortunately most were accidently sold on a foreign pet site as dog biscuits and were probably eaten by now. As to where I got them-why I dug them up of course. It was around 1799 when I dug them up I guess.(my memory is a bit foggy in my old age) I was in Egypt with general Napoleon's troops when I found them along with a bunch of other stuff(including the Imhotep Stone which I haven't released yet and which will put the Rosetta Stone to shame). I shipped them to Europe and America and they have been in a safe place ever since. Now as to who I have sold them to, confidentiality forbids me to release the names of any of my buyers.
A "joke" invery bad taste if you ask me.
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