Software engineer Ed Snible has a go at rationalising Egyptian archaeological preservation issues in his own way. Addressing the CPAC he writes:
"I am sure you will do the right thing when it comes to mummies and monuments, whatever that may be. I oppose restrictions on coins and scarabs.[...] There are many people in the US and Europe who collect Ptolemaic/Egyptian, Roman/Egyptian, and early Islamic Egyptian coins because of philosophical or genetic connections to those times [sic, sic - we all have genetic connections to people alive in those times", Ed duh]. Many are unprepared for the 21st century expectation for a proof of provenance. Please craft the agreement so that if a reasonable person in 1983 might have lost a provenance the object can still be imported into the US.Oh P-L-E-A-S-E (read the
Mr Snible, an object with no-known provenance before 1983 can legally be imported into the USA and will legally be importable into the USA under any CCPIA MOU, because demonstrating a pre-1983 provenance figures nowhere in the text of the CCPIA. Check it out (it would have been better to check it out before writing fantasy-driven nonsense to the CPAC and posting it up where everyone can see that yet another artefact collector does not know the law).
Snible goes further. The collector wants to see an Egyptian antiquity market set up to handle dugup archaeological objects ("Perhaps skilled US antiquities dealers could be sent to mentor and reboot Egyptian markets" - the USA of course has the monopoly on "skills"). I am not at all clear where he thinks this would protect sites - he seems to think that "sorting out the black market" is the aim of cultural resource management, not protecting sites. When are US collectors going to start thinking?
Finally, let us note again that here we have a collector who thinks that if the USA should say "hop", everybody should jump. He thinks the CPAC is going to dictate how the Egyptians (a sovereign state) will look after their "monuments". He thinks the USA should be able to induce the Egyptians (a sovereign state) to reverse ALL of their antiquities legislation (because the Americans say so) and create a licit market, and that they will do it. And if they don't, what? Random drone strikes? America will send Victoria Nuland to arrange US-compliant regime change there too? What blinkered perversity is this?
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10 comments:
We have a 1970 treaty, a 1983 law, a proposed 2014 memorandum, the US Customs Service implementation of the police, and the US court system which is used when there is a disagreement. We can't discuss the law without the context of the system it will be enforced under.
Suppose in the future I import a coin, and the Customs Service and I disagree if the coin is "licit" or "illicit". My understanding -- and I am not a lawyer -- is that there will be a "finding of fact" to see if the coin is licit or illicit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_of_fact
Your blog is discussing Questions of Law … what the law is for licit coins, and what the law is for illicit coins. I am concerned about the fact: is my object illicit? My understanding is the decision that my object is illicit brings in all the rules of evidence, and all the legal precedents about what makes good evidence.
What if there is no evidence, how will the court decide the facts?
If, as Peter Tompa has claimed, the US Customs Service demands as evidence illustrated auction catalogs, and my coin did not appear, what do I do?
My most recent purchase is a Roman Republican bronze coin from the RBW collection with a 1988 provenance. But the only evidence I have is an undated ticket with a dealer's name and an unsigned note by the collector with the purchase date and price. Neither is notarized. I would call the coin legit, but since my evidence is weak the MOU might be used since I can't show legitimacy.
Paul, my last sentence is misworded. I meant "I would call the coin legit, but since my evidence is weak the Customs and the courts might apply the MOU rules for illicit objects since I can't prove legitimacy."
You say "an object with no-known provenance before 1983 can legally be imported into the USA and will legally be importable into the USA under any CCPIA MOU, because demonstrating a pre-1983 provenance figures nowhere in the text of the CCPIA."
Well, yes, but there is a little more to it, and you might have explained just what an importer does actually need to do (in respect of material declared under an MOU).
An importer doesn't need to demonstrate actual provenance, but he still has to meet the requirements of of the CCPIA, specifically Sec. 307.
In most practical cases this would mean providing satisfactory evidence that the material in question had left the source country on or before the date of designation under the MOU, or at least ten years before the date of import into the U.S.
This "satisfactory evidence" need only be "declarations under oath" by the importer, and a "statement" by the consignor, that to the best of their belief the material in question had met these requirements.
So while "provenance" is not required you can't necessarily simply import any designated object at will. Unless that is you are prepared to wait ten years.
Ross Glanfield
@Ed 1/2. What I think is it would be jolly good if responsible collectors in your country organized themselves into some kind of a group to represent their interests, let's say it is called a "Guild" (copying the dealers), and then they get a good lawyer who knows his stuff, and is not afraid to answer difficult questions to help you through sorting out what is and what is not in the CCPIA. Obviously the collecting community in the US is has for the last decade or so been ill-served in this regard. Most of the lawyers discussing this do so from the point of view of an anti-preservationist agenda, rather than providing information to collectors about the state of the art and precisely what they need to do to avoid legal pitfalls.
You do not have that yet, do you?
So it is that collectors are left on their own to thrash about as best they can while the lawyers strut at "meetings" and "round tables" which help nobody.
The USA (I've said this before) has crap laws on antiquities. A mishmash of vague and conflicting ideas which express no clear underlying idea and purpose. It is no comfort I am sure to US collectors and dealers caught up in this crap that the situation is by no means unique to America.
Ed, we are discussing applying the CCPIA to artefacts from Egypt. This (as Ross/Chapman points out) involves neither "provenance", nor "1983", they become important in OTHER areas of US legislation (NSPA for example).
In the light of your questions, I think we should take one step back.
I and everybody else are assuming that any coin you buy WILL be licit. I am assuming that if you decide to buy and import into the USA a coin, it will be a coin that not only passes any test of licitness a US customs officer will apply in the bounds of US law (that is here primarily the law OUTSIDE the CCPIA) but actually IS licit. (!) Surely its legality is one of the basic criteria involved in the responsible purchase of a particular piece of numismatic study material. It should be number one in the Numismatic Code of Ethics/Practice.
It seems to me what you are actually saying goes along the lines: "if I currently buy coin which is illicit in the light of certain US legislation, and try to import it into the USA, I'll probably get away with it UNLESS there is a MOU which makes customs give my coin additional scrutiny". It seems to me that what you are saying indicates that this is the unspoken text behind your opposition (and that of other collectors, Tompa included) to the application of the CCPIA.
@Ed 2/2:
Your last sentence, amended, still contains a mistake: "the courts might apply the MOU rules for illicit objects" the MOU contains no "rules", that is the CCPIA and the latter does not determine licitness of the OBJECT, only its date of export! Tompa is muddling you again.
Now it may be that your case comes up before a "bulldog" customs man who says - as I think is the case in the Tompa anecdote he makes so much of "OK, you pass the CCPIA with flying colours, but now I have you, lets look at the customs documentation, and is this stolen property?". But then, as I say these are precisely the things which should in any case be crystal clear when you decide to buy that coin. N'est ce pas? You seem to be afraid that if you cut corners and set out to buy un-kosher coins, the MOU means it increases the likelihood you'll be caught. I suggest buy kosher coins,m and only kosher coins and there'd be no problem.
But then, it's not just individual imports by collectors, many imports are by dealers (non-dodgy ones we are expected to understand). Is not scrutiny to detect illicit coins coming into the country and then put onto the market precisely what the US market needs, so that the number of illicit coins ON the market is smaller? Or do US collectors want lots of illicit coins on their market? Because what some of them are doing now suggests that they really do.
I suppose there comes a situation when we have to decide whether its good that amateurs who don't necessarily understand the system very well set out to import items themselves rather than going through the fabled reputable and experienced dealer who should know his cultural property law inside-out.
In short, it seems to me (as I said in the post) that your opposition to the CCPIA is based on utterly false premises. And you can thank the ACCG for that.
@James Glanfield/ Ross Chapman
"you might have explained just what an importer does actually need to do (in respect of material declared under an MOU)."
Why? Why "should" I? You have Mr Tompa of the ACCG to do that.
If, in fact, you cannot make head or tail of teh wording of teh CCPIA yourself, get the "Collectors' Guild" to write and publish online 'how to' guidelines to it instead of the political agitation they are currently doing. Let them do something useful for collectors other than representing the interests of dealers.
(Perhaps one reason the ACCG, PNG and IAPN, ANS etc do not do this is that they want to scare collectors off from "doing it themselves" to protect the profits of the dealers?)
"meet the requirements of of the CCPIA, specifically Sec. 307.
Yep. Not particularly onerous is it? "provenance" is not required.
"you can't necessarily simply import any designated object at will.
uuuuuhhhhhh, I "rather" thought that it was taken as a given by all concerned that this is what this legislation is actually FOR! To stop smugglers sending freshly looted or stolen stuff to Munich or Zurich and a week later it's sent on to Miami or Wisconsin, 'laundered' by a transfer from one country to another.
Tell me, what kind of collector is going to buy coins potentially found in Egypt or Syria which have NO attached verifiable evidence that they did NOT come from the looting by armed groups in the past three years? I'd have a name for them, but I'll refrain from using it here.
Yes, let's get rid of the idea that collectors can buy any object at will, totally disregarding the circumstances of the antiquities market today. The Wild West no longer exists.
You said: "You have Mr Tompa of the ACCG to do that."
Please do me one courtesy - desist from associating me with the ACCG or the dealer lobby - generally speaking I do not support their views or their anti-MOU campaigns, as I have pointed out before.
Ross Glanfield
While I am glad that there is ONE coin collector who "does not support" (which is not the same as oppose is it - I do not see your voice yet on the CPAC docket), the fact that there IS an organization claiming thousands of active members which claims to speak on behalf of the hobby in the US (at least), encourages us to see this as representing what coineys do and think. If it were otherwise there's be a group set up in opposition, and there is not.
The ACCG says it is there for "collectors", so WHY are "collectors" not pressuring it to do what they actually need such an organization to do? Like for example provide clear, balanced/objective, detailed and authoritative "how to" guidelines guiding them through the complex US legal mess?
Collectors only have themselves to blame for allowing the hobby to be highjacked by the dealers' lobby. The latter are there for their clients, not the other way round.
You wrote: "While I am glad that there is ONE coin collector who "does not support" (which is not the same as oppose is it - I do not see your voice yet on the CPAC docket)"
And I don't see your submission either.
The MOU's are primarily a matter for Americans to sort out - my comments here were simply to clarify their application for people who might be involved.
In any case there is little point in you or me commenting to CPAC for the simple reason that we don't have a vote in the U.S.
Ross Glanfield
Well, what US dealers do with the archaeological heritage of ancient, Hellenistic, Roman or Islamic Egypt is very much a matter of WORLD concern. This is not a matter "just" of concern to the Americans. The eyes of the world are upon them.
I have checked with a US lawyer, he confirms that there is nothing in the CCPIA which restricts public comment to US citizens, taxpayers or voters.
We are all America's public, and if we do not like what we see, we have a right to express our views.
Barring computer glitches, I'll be commenting soon, but I like to see what others write.
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