Yet another 'collecting history' claimed by an American owner of a dugup antiquity proves to be - ahem - "problematic" (Owen Jarus,
'
Gospel of Jesus's Wife': Doubts Raised About Ancient Text' Live Science April 22, 2014). This one has echoes of the Suzie Jelinek story of the St Louis Ka Nefer Nefer mummy mask. Readers will remember that the 'provenance' claimed by the current owner of a controversial papyrus was a document (contract) which stated that "it was
purchased, along with five other Coptic papyrus fragments, from a man
named Hans-Ulrich Laukamp in November 1999 and that Laukamp had obtained
it in 1963 from Potsdam in then-East Germany". Oh, the "turned up in East Germany" card too. Like the "Leutwitz Apollo"? It turns out, here too, not to be too difficult to check, did the Harvard scholar try?
In an effort to confirm the origins of the papyrus and discover its
history, Live Science went searching for more information about Laukamp
and his descendents, business partners or friends. Our findings indicate that Laukamp was a co-owner of the now-defunct
ACMB-American Corporation for Milling and Boreworks in Venice, Fla.
Documents filed in Sarasota County, Fla., show that Laukamp was based in
Germany at the time of his death in 2002 and that a man named René
Ernest was named as the representative of his estate in Sarasota County. In an exchange of emails in German, Ernest said that Laukamp did not
collect antiquities, did not own this papyrus and, in fact, was living
in West Berlin in 1963, so he couldn't have crossed the Berlin Wall into
Potsdam. Laukamp, he said, was a toolmaker and had no interest in old
things. In fact, Ernest was astonished to hear that Laukamp's name had
been linked to this papyrus. [...] Ernest said, adding that, as far as he knows,
Laukamp had no children and has no living relatives [...] Another acquaintance of Laukamp — Axel Herzsprung, who was also a
co-owner of ACMB-American Corporation for Milling and Boreworks — told
Live Science (in German in an email) that while Laukamp collected
souvenirs on trips, he never heard of him having a papyrus. To his
knowledge, Laukamp did not collect antiquities, Herzsprung said.
How convenient that Laukamp has no living relatives. Jarus then raises the question of the copy of a "typed and
signed letter addressed to H. U. Laukamp" that dates to July 15, 1982,
from Peter Munro, a now-deceased professor at the Freie University
Berlin" which refers to "one of Mr. Laukamp's papyri"
King wrote that the letter said that "a colleague, Professor Fecht, [had seen these papyri] However, if Ernest and Herzsprung are correct, and Laukamp
never collected antiquities, the question becomes: Why and how does this
document exist? Munro died in 2009, and the "Professor Fecht" may be
Gerhard Fecht, an Egyptology professor at the Freie University Berlin
who passed away in 2006,
The collecting history relies on:
Laukamp (died 2002 no heirs) being a collector,
Munro (died 2009) not being around to ask about what he really knows about Fecht, who equally is not around because he died in 2006. Nothing can be verified, and the letter itself is only known as a 'copy' . "Pap Dodge" looks dodgier.
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