Some Realities of Looting: Antinopolis in Egypt

I discussed the looting at Antinopolis here just over a year ago but in a recent article in the National Geographic (Dan Vergano, 'Archaeologists warn of a 'pillaged Egypt' in 25 years', National Geographic Channel, June 3rd 2014) there are some photographs that seem worth sharing in connection with the ongoing debate about the US MOU. The first show how looters dig for saleable artefacts at the site of Antinopolis, Egypt, which whatever the airhead coineys will try to tell you includes any collectable small metal artefacts such as coins they may find (the sieve in the photo is not for finding life-size marble statues and mosaics). As can be seen, they are intent that not a bit of diggable stratigraphy which may contain some more geegaws to sell to the middleman is left unturned. This part of the site is well-and-truly-trashed, and it's all because somewhere at the other end of the criminal network will pay money no-questions-asked for some of what they find. It's a no-brainer that if the middleman stops coming because he can't shift the stuff, nobody in their right mind is going to be shifting this much dirt, dust and rubble under the hot Egyptian summer sun. But, greedy collectors don't like to see it like that.

Photo: Ann Hermes

The next image they'll shut out of their heads is this one of the heap of smashed pots, probably from graves and other such contexts.They show the other end of the same phenomenon. Unlike coins and small objects, these are too bulky (and fragile maybe) to smuggle away so easily. In any case they are not so saleable if they are not decorated or faultlessly intact. So after they've been hoiked out of the context of deposition, given the once-over, a whole load of them are unceremoniously dumped. This shows very clearly that the digging and the hoiking are market-led. It also illustrates the point that the damage that looters do is not limited to merely taking away the objects they sell. They dig their way through so much to get the bits they see as marketable, throwing it all aside, this goes for the stratigraphy the artefacts are embedded in (floors, pits, makeup layers, destruction rubble, building layers, graves or votive deposits) as well as many of the associated items (artefacts and ecofacts). It's all chucked aside to get the few geegaws foreign collectors (and hence the middlemen with whom they have contact) will pay a few Egyptian pounds for.

Broken pottery from looting litters the ground at Antinopolis. Photo: Ann Hermes

Just the other day a muddleheaded blogger was like a scratched record repeating for the nineteenth time his second-hand horror story how on a site in Italy a student saw how some pottery vessels were smashed by archaeologists afraid that if they reburied them intact in the site, looters would come and dig up the whole area looking for them and damage unexcavated parts of the site. Here we see that looters themselves do the same kind of damage to artefacts themselves. This of course never appears in horror stories told by coineys or artefact collectors - who for reasons difficult to integrate with what they all automatically assert about their own personal 'collecting ethics' - tend to whitewash and sympathise with the law-breaking looters.