It is being reported that prominent New York dealer Jerome Eisenberg of Royal Athena has passed away. He started as a mail-order ancient coin dealer in 1942 at the age of 12, opened the ‘Royal-Athena Galleries’ in New York in 1958. At the end of October 2020, Eisenberg retired and closed his gallery after it had been operating for 78 years under the same proprietor. He was certainly a very knowledgeable dealer. He represented himself in all his antiquities catalogues as “a leader for several years in the promotion of the ethical acquisition of antiquities by museums and collectors”. He was also from the 1990s onwards a passionate advocate for the antiquities trade who vehemently and often eloquently (see here) opposed attempts to curb what he and others considered to be "collectors rights". Despite his rhetorical insistence that for the most part the antiquities market was squeaky clean and capable of self-regulation, on a closer look, it turns out that even his gallery has "repeatedly been found selling looted, smuggled and stolen antiquities". Christos Tsirogiannis (2021 'The Antiquities Market We Deserve: 'Royal-Athena Galleries' (1942-2020)' Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia Vol. 32, no. 18 N.S. (2020):147-175, 2021) has recently written about this.
Eisenberg was the editor in chief of the dealer/collectors' magazine Minerva which he founded (1990-2009). His gallery's catalogues Art of the Ancient world: I to ?? [strange numbering system] (1965-1999+) were very popular. Also of note were some coin books that he wrote at the beginning of his career, and at lkeast on book on the collection of shells. I also think he is of note for his arguments for the Disc of Phaistos being a modern fake that I think perspicaceous and eminently reasonable.
Update
New York Times obituary by Sam Roberts - July 14, 2022
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