Obama's "Kalmakarra Cave" Rhyton, Not What it Seems?

Paula Cussi

Suzan Mazur ('A Fake? -- "America's Souvenir to the Iranian People", Scoop October 9, 2013) enlarges on the arguments for the "Queens' Warehouse"  Goggly-Eyed Rhyton not being a genuine antiquity. The object was sold by the Aboutaams in 2002 reportedly for $950,000 to Paula Cussi, a Mexican billionaire and trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Cussi first saw the piece in Geneva in 1999, the year before Hicham Aboutaam brought it to the US from Zurich. [...] A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigation followed and the piece was confiscated because Aboutaam claimed the object had been taken from Syria not Iran prior to 1999 (false invoice). The case went to court in New York, Aboutaam returned the money to Cussi and paid a fine of $5,000. The artifact was put in storage in Queens for a decade until its recent return to Iran. 

Mazur considers the stylistic discrepancies, quoting Oscar Muscarella before passing on to other problems with the authentification of the piece. She has talked with the three people who authenticated it before the sale to Mrs Cussi (as the prospective buyer had wisely requested), and the resultant picture is interesting. One wonders why Aboutaam chose the particular people he turned to to offer these opinions, and why the latter agreed to participate. The object had been cleaned removing any surface deposits - who did this when and why?* It is worth noting that it emerges in effect that the prime evidence for this being authentic is the cracked texture of the silver in one place at least. This same "crystallisation" is often taken by many coin collectors as being a sure-fire means of identifying a silver coin as "authentic", despite it being a chemical effect.

 I think the message of this is that without proper and complete documentation of collecting history these days it is risky accepting any "antiquity" as a genuine dugup. There are so many fakes on the market that any dealer offering something as "trust-me-genuine", even if he alleges it is backed up by the opinions of "experts" may be - knowingly or unwittingly - dealing in something that is not what it seems. It would be interesting to know what collecting history the Aboutaams offered Mrs Cussi in 2002.

* note the parallel between this and the removal of the inscription on the hand of the Ka Nefer Nefer mask which made its ancient origins more difficult to determine.