While the "seller-numismatists" exhibited zero intellectual curiosity and
refused to co-operate, Ute Wartenberg Kagan ('
ISIS, Numismatics, and Conflict Antiquities' ANS blog 2nd July, posted by Matthew Wittmann) has managed to identify the
book spotted amongst an ISIL fighter's possessions. The photo showed the volume open at the article of Maurice Sartre, ”La Syrie sous la domination achéménide” published in the 1989 volume
Archéologie et Histoire de la Syrie II , edited by Winfried Orthmann and Jean-Marie Dentzer. The author says:
how this very scholarly book on archaeology of Syria ends up in the hands of ISIS fighters is an interesting question. I, for one, have never underestimated the often erudite knowledge people who are involved in looting ancient sites in the Mediterranean. For people interested in a general overview of coins from Syria, this book is indeed helpful. [...]
So this is an extremely unlikely find—a scholarly, not exactly inexpensive, and heavy—book on the archaeology of Syria in the hands of ISIS fighters. If anyone doubts the multifaceted connections between looted antiquities and war in Syria, this discovery has to make one wonder.
Vignette:
the owl of wisdom, not all US coineys possess that quality.
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