Hooray, eh? '
Archaeological Unit of Rafah Land Port, Custom Authorities succeeded in seizing 9 archaeological coins'
Egypt Today, 26 Nov 2020
The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has released photos of some of the nine coins seized by customs authorities at Rafah Land Port, the sole crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip while they were about to be smuggled out of the country.
after the archaeological unit in North Sinai received a notification from Rafah Customs Authority regarding suspicion of the authenticity of some coins in the possession of a traveler, a specialized archaeological committee was formed, headed by Ragab el-Husseiny, director general of the Center for Archeological Units in North Sinai. The committee confirmed the authenticity of these coins.
Necessary legal measures were taken and the coins were confiscated in favor of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, in accordance with the Antiquities Protection Law No. 117 of 1983 and its amendments.
It's good we get the name of the head of the Commission, I don't know what his specialisation is, but to my eye, on the really wuzzy photos they've provided of some white metal discs with what looks like black ash on them, it seems that the bottom three are cast in moulds made by the same pattern, Aren't these fakes?
Al-Husseiny indicated that the seized coins are circular in shape and made of metal dating back to the Greco-Roman era from the reign of Alexander the Great.
One of the sides of the coins has the God Zues sitting on a throne carrying an eagle in one hand and a sceptre in the other.
There are also writings on the coins in latin.
ummm. No.
But what does Brian have to say about this?
ReplyDeleteFascinating stuff. But what does Brian think about this?
ReplyDeleteAl-Husseiny indicated that the seized coins are circular in shape and made of metal ...
ReplyDeleteWell, that level of expertise is pretty impressive. I can see why Al-Husseiny was eagerly appointed as Director General of the Center for Archeological Units. I'm sure he'll soon learn to distinguish between Greek and Latin after a few decades in the job.
Or at least learn to issue a slightly less ridiculous statement to the media ...
Well "Dick" and "John", since Brian is an architect and not (as far as I know) a numismatist, perhaps he does not feel that he has anything substantive to add here. But YOU TWO are both artefact hunters that collect coins (don't deny it). So what do you know about fakes of Alexander III didrachms (as I think these are intended to be)? Have you anything useful to say? Eh? Put your tekkie mouths to good use, share your knowledge. Do something useful instead of just sniping.
ReplyDeleteHow interesting. The alert Egypt customs have seized a handful of modern forgeries of Alexander tetrsdrachms minted in Babylon(!) but coming from Egypt. How is it that so many published seizures of antiquities coming from the east tend to be fakes? We constantly hear of great captures e we orthopedic millions$ but the pictures show total junk (ancient) or modern replicas. Why can’t they tell the difference?
ReplyDeleteHi, are you sure they are tetras? No scale is given...
ReplyDeleteanyhow, I think there are a whole range of reasons. They mostly affect the same countries, but are not restricted to them
1) Through bad organisation the newspaper has not got from customs/police photos of the actual objects concerned, so stick in any old photo they have.
2) The charges are trumped up, intended to incriminate somebody not even involved in the antiquities trade and the objects planted,
3) The person charged deals on the antiquities market but mainly fakes and crap. But again, why this person is caught? A lot of these busts are actually due to 'insider' tip-offs.
4) There may even have been no recent seizure at all, some of these stories could be fake news created for various politically-driven purposes.
Possible some others too.
That of course does not mean that there is no trade in genuine stuff that is getting through...
Thanks for your comment. Makes a change from the other lot.
First thing, they’re obviously tetradrachms since they are certainly not drachms. By the way, ‘tetras’ are a kind of tropical fish - I.e. Neon tetras. Only rather disreputable dealers use the term for tetradrachmsand, presumably, that doesn’t include you!!
DeleteMore seriously, one question ought to be why customs agents often triumphantly publicize seizures of always highly valued groups of ‘ancient’ objects that are clear fakes. You’ve highlighted such groups before: worthless junk coins from Libya; that huge seizure worth $millions from Turkey that was low rent trash; all sorts of groups from Egypt; etc. et al. Shou we be getting suspicious about this given how many real objects continue to appear? Could it be that these spurious seizures are publicized to make up for groups that go out without notice, but which have a real value? Or are they done to justify salary increases for the vigilant agents? Waddya think?
I'm not sure, from my point of view and looking at the artefact trade as a whole, how I would really differentiate 'reputable' from 'disreputable' dealers ('reputation' for what?).
ReplyDeleteYes, the prevalence of fakes in these news items is a puzzle. We should note that the pattern of the reports are usually the same: "this is what we've got, and now we are going to send them to a commission who will determine that they are real", and then it all goes quiet. We had the same with all those "brownie" manuscripts from Syria that turned up in Turkey, every single one a fake.
I'll add two more possibilities, that a group that knows the authorities are onto them might somehow provoke a seizure or two, which then turn out to be fakes or low value crap and then customs officers might be dissuaded from looking for more. In many of these countries, losing face is an issue, if officers higher up start to take the glory for a find of subordinates that then turns out to not actually be what it was made out to be, maybe the men on the ground will be asked not to risk making any more embarrassing situations.
OR, the customs officers/border guards are actually mixed up in the passage of these items and again a seizure or two is staged to deflect attention. And again, the moment the commissions says "this is crap", any investigations are dropped.
Of course there is also the issue of passing fakes onto the market. A hapless dealer might look less askance at some dirtied-up coins that what paperwork there is shows came out of the MENA region, rather than straight from China (or wherever they are being produced).
No scale is given and the picture is very low-definition, but these coins could very well be... fake dekadrachms (!!).
ReplyDeleteA short time before 28 november a smuggler has been arrested in Rafah on the Palestinian side, by the Gaza police, as he was attempting to smuggle 6 fake Alexander dekadrachms from the Gaza strip into Egypt. This Egyptian claim is very curious : who would smuggle antiquities (even fake ones)from Egypt - which is a country open to the world market - to Gaza, which is a country under siege with all its borders closed and subject to the closest police and military scrutiny in the world?
These 9 coins obverse sides correspond to 2 of the 4 known obverse dies used for Alexander dekadrachms. The dekadrachms seized by the Gaza police, probably on the same day, show the same die as the one in the middle row of the Egyptian photo. Of course all are fakes.
The Egyptian claim is misleading: the guy was smuggling coins not from Egypt but from Gaza, where somebody has been hard working to cast fake Alexander dekadrachms from a squeeze of an authentic one, probably this one: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=6672784
He made several moulds from this squeeze, with different dotted circles, one even with two jugate Alexander portraits!
So, we are getting to bigger and bigger denominations! I was interested to see your suggestion that the mould may have been made from one of the Hani coins that I discussed a while back (http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/search?q=Hani&max-results=20&by-date=true). Thanks for your comments.
ReplyDeleteAll the previously unrecorded Alexander dekadrachms that surfaced on the international market since 2013 likely come from one very large hoard discovered underwater in Gaza, part in May or June 2013, the bigger part in early 2017.
ReplyDeleteIn the spring 2017 a Palestinian archaeologist took pictures of 2 decadrachms at a dealer’s home in Gaza. On 16 July 2017 a man was arrested at Erez crossing attempting to smuggle 4 decadrachms from Gaza to Israel, one of them being one of the two previously photographed in Gaza. These 4 coins were secured by the Israel Antiquities Authority and are still kept there under the supervision of Dr Donald Ariel.
Then, from September 2017 to late 2019, 23 previously unrecorded specimens were publicly auctioned or published on social networks. Of these 23 coins, 11 were auctioned by Roma Numismatics (plus 1 published by a RomaNum partner as being in his own collection), and 10 were commissionned or published on social networks by Mr Hani.
The underwater hoard included at least two dozens dekadrachms and hundreds, if not thousands of Alexander tetradrachms (and a few didrachms).
Thanks, if you follow the link I gave above, you'll see I wrote a few items about this and the coverage of this affair and elicited a few comments from Mr Hani. It'd be interesting to be able to follow the trail of the fakes back and see precisely where they interlink with the ones they were patterned on...
ReplyDelete