In a ceremony at the National Geographic Society on Wednesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) returned an ancient sarcophagus to the Arab Republic of Egypt and its Embassy. John Morton (Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for U.S. ICE) and CPB Assistant Commissioner Allen Gina handed over the object to Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities.“Through the facilitation and enforcement of U.S. trade laws, this artifact will provide the Egyptian people a key to their past,” said CBP Assistant Commissioner Gina. “Customs and Border Protection is pleased to work in partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to enforce U.S. customs law and to return priceless artifacts to their lawful owner.”
The object was detained by CBP during routine inspections of goods coming into the United States at Miami International Airport in 2008 and initially scrutinized for agricultural concerns (the case was opened by U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agricultural Specialist Herbert Kercado in a search for wood-boring beetles). ICE contacted the importer to establish whether the coffin had been exported legally from Egypt. ICE tracked the sale of the sarcophagus to a U.S. citizen, who was neither an art dealer nor broker. He claimed to have sold it already to a Canadian. Neither the importer nor the Spanish Gallery that exported it could establish its legal export from Egypt or when or how it would have left Egypt. Given the absence of a credible provenance, the item was determined to be owned by Egypt through its Cultural Patrimony Laws. The item was seized as imported stolen property. ICE worked through its attaché offices in Egypt and Spain to provide the information that led to the forfeiture of the property. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, CBP and ICE Miami were able to successfully counter a legal challenge by the Spanish art gallery that had sold the sarcophagus. The challenge was later abandoned before it could go to trial.
In the course of the investigations it was learnt that the alleged provenance of the sarcophagus was not real. The alleged collection from which it came did not exist. The Egyptians had never authorized the export of this particular sarcophagus whenever in fact it was exported, and it was unclear when that took place and under what circumstances. Morton said the records of acquisition in Europe either did not exist, or were questionable, so the U.S. government seized the coffin. U.S. officials then demonstrated in federal court that neither the shipper nor the U.S. buyer had legal claim to the ancient artifact, and the coffin was forfeited to the United States.
The coffin had belonged to a man whose was Imhesy, and dates back to the 21st Dynasty, it is very finely decorated. The sarcophagus will now go on display in Cairo April 7. Hawass says it will ultimately be exhibited at a museum that is under construction in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.
The photos show only the lid of the object, where is the rest? Will those responsible for the earlier stages of the post-excavation history of this object now declared illegally exported be under investigation? There is every reason now why they should be.
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Photo: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
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3 comments:
I totally agree with you that the collectors and galleries need to get the lion's share of blame for this. This is a record of a previously unknown person from the 21st dynasty and hopefully typographic studies will be able to place the region in which the coffin was found.
Egypt really needs to get a handle on what they have, though. The case against SLAM for the Ka Nefer Nefer mask, for example, should be rock solid for Egypt, but the country has no record of the item past the early sixties. It was in a storehouse, probably a shack with a padlock on the door and no one kept inventory of what was there versus what should have been! This poor record keeping concerning the items that HAVE been found is going to hinder egypt if they are serious about preventing looting and getting items that have been looted back. Concerning this coffin, apparently Egypt never knew it existed. This is understandable if it was recently dug up and then sold overseas, but inexcusable if it had been stolen from an excavation.
Museum thefts occur in the US and UK, and all over the world.
“Egypt really needs to get a handle on what they have, though “. Absolutely, as does every single museum and collection throughout the world. This however is very difficult in the case of sudden deposits of huge numbers of various types of objects from excavations on a museum which will always be (by definition) understaffed. I doubt US or UK museums were coping any differently with masses of material from major excavations in the 1950s. But yes, let's see some major investment in catalogueing everywhere.
I'd include private collections in that.
The case against SLAM for the Ka Nefer Nefer mask, for example, should be rock solid for Egypt, but the country has no record of the item past the early sixties. Well, sorry that is nonsense. The object was excavated in 1952, and there are three published photos of it as coming from those excavations (as well as field records). If the people doing the vetting of SLAM purchases had done their job properly (and they were not) they’d have found the photo of an identical object in the literature.
The case IS rock solid, but the Americans do not want to give it back – much to their shame. It is their own research into verifying its provenance that is NOT "rock solid".
http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2006-02-15/news/out-of-egypt/
http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2008/10/ka-nefer-nefer-mummy-mask-recap.html
http://alunsalt.com/2008/11/26/do-you-need-a-note-from-a-criminal-to-prove-an-artefact-is-stolen-2/
“It was in a storehouse, probably a shack with a padlock on the door” Why would you say something like that? I have seen the Sakkara storerooms and they are far more substantial than what you suggest. In any case the object apears to have gone missing when on its way to an exhibition in Cairo.
“No one kept inventory of what was there versus what should have been!”
I have not seen the inventory that SLAM is questioning. I imagine it looks like a museum inventory of excavation finds of 1952 would normally look.
BUT the state of Egyptian records is not what the question is here, it is SLAM’s OWN failure to establish legitimate provenance BEFORE buying, not quarelling over whether or not to give it back when caught with its trousers round its ankles.
This poor record keeping concerning the items that HAVE been found is going to hinder egypt if they are serious about preventing looting and getting items that have been looted back What is the ETHICAL thing for SLAM to do here?
Don't know what happened there, I pressed "publish comment" and it disappears into the ether. In case it does not come back, THIS is what Scrabcake answered:
"Scrabcake has left a new comment on your post "US Returns Ancient Sarcophagus to Egypt":
I wish you wouldn't be so damn combative. I'm agreeing with you. It IS the ethical thing for SLAM to do to return the mask. They got greedy and bought it thinking they weren't going to get caught. They did no research whatsoever. The Mask is published with photographs in Goneim's Lost Pyramid and The Unfinished Pyramid of Horus Sekhemkhet, the former of which is readily available on Ebay for about 5 bucks. They ought to return it, but they won't because they know that they can leverage the collector's community to get public sympathy and because they have an investment in it. In the real world, humans do not always do what is ethically right.
They also know that the legal onus is on Egypt to prove that it was stolen, and EGYPT CAN'T DO THAT.
The last record they have of the object, is in 1959, when the object was prepared for an exhibition to Tokyo. This is according to the University of Oregon's Laura E Young "A Framework for the Resolution of Claims for Cultural Property." She hardly seems to be a collector's advocate, but she admits that Egypt has no record of the object after the Tokyo Exhibition. It was probably stolen in a breakin at the Saqqara warehouse in the eighties. I've actually done some research on this, and if you want to know what Egypt is claiming as the provenance, you are welcome to read my summary http://sites.google.com/site/egyptologygeek/19th-dynasty-peoples/ka-nefer-nefer
What is scary about this is that there were a lot of smaller items from this burial which were inscribed for Ka Nefer Nefer's nickname, Neferu. Neferu is like the "Jane Doe" of Egyptian names, so if these objects were stolen, they'd be pretty hard to trace on the Antiquities Market."
Thanks Scrabcake.
My reply:
I rather think it was your comment that was coming over as combative.
It is the collectors' assertion that having one's ancient stuff stolen by looters is everybody's fault but the collectors. You seemed to be saying the same thing going off on a tack about the Ka Nefer Nefer affair and the alleged lack of documentation. I just do not buy that argument.
I stand by my position that it is the indiscriminate buyer who is responsible for the problems of illicit antiquities. Here we have a prime case. If my car is stolen and the cops find it in your garage, it is up to you to show you have the paperwork in order, not to me to prove I did not give it to you.
But thanks for the link to your website.
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