Martin Schøyen Defends Part of Cuneiform Tablet Collection Through His Lawyers.

Some of Martin Schøyen's collection was seized by the police upon request from Iraqi authorities August 24, 2021. At their request, a critical report (The Oslo Report - March 8th) was produced by the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, March 2022 on the degree to which a legal export can be demonstrated - or not. Now the collector has instructed his lawyer to defend (mainly) the cuneiform tablet collection from what he represents as "personal attacks" by the heritage professional(s) who authored the report. Note a number of incantation bowls were also reportedly included in the seizure. The lawyer's letter issued by Cato Schiøtz of Advokatfirmaet Glittertind AS makes puzzling reading on a number of counts. In particular what is offered (pp 6-8) as as legitimating collection history for "No less than" 41 of the 83 cuneiform tablets in the seizure is just a series of assumptions and hearsay. The crucial part of the argument is that they "originate from the Cumberland Clark collection" created from the 1920s until the latter's death in 1941. Now Cumberland Clark is a very interesting character in his own right ( Nick Churchill Dorset’s McGonagall – Cumberland Clark; Anthony Daniels, 'The second-worst poet in English; Jeremy Miles, 'Remembering Cumberland Clark doyen of doggerel who went from bard to verse'). In this context, his significance is as the author, among others, of a book: 'The Art of Early Writing, with Special Reference to the Cuneiform System ( pp. 151, and 16 plates, 1938, The Mitre Press).

But then, after Clark died with his housekeeper in a 1941 bombing raid on his flat in Bournemouth, his collection (which therefore must have survived) lay somewhere in limbo, until "the heirs sold the collection to Mark Wilson – a highly respected antiques dealer – in the mid-1980s". The letter then states that Schøyen "acquired the Cumberland Clark collection" "as part of Martha Crouse collection" in 1989 and 1990. And this, according to the lawyer, was the first time some of them were itemised, but "further identification of the texts could only be done after preservation (when necessary)". Preservation? Why would cunies excavated (reportedly) 90 years earlier, kept in Clark's collection, and then with a respected dealer who sold them on to the Cruse collection, where they were for some time, now suddely need conservation? What was the cause of the deterioration of these objects curated by collectors for nearly a century? A second batch of cunies said tio be from the Clark collection was "acquired through a trade agreement with Mark Wilson on the 20th of June 1994" without hasving passed through the Crouse collection. So the original batch was split by Wilson some time between the mid 1980s and mid 1990s. Other cunies from the collection also surfaced independently, 25 assigned to this collection were donated in 2007 to the UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library. Where did they come from? Via Wilson too? Also in UCLA are another group of cunies that are reputed to be from the Clark collection that are inscribed giving the place they were used as "Dur-Abi-ešuh" in the Lloyd Cotsen Cuneiform Tablet Collection bought in 2002. The interest of this is that the site itself is unknown, but material from it has been surfacing recently from illicit digs by looters who evidently know where it is. So how did Cumberland Clark get hold of fragments? Or did he? Is "Cumberland Clark" just a name dealers attach to fragments they have to get them passage through the trade? This brings us straight back to the question of the verification of the trite collecting histories that has been a problem raised for a long time now (see my initial note on the Schoyen publication). Note that in the listing of the cunies given by the lawyer, they are listed by MS numbers and not Clark numbers or reference to pieces mentioned in Chapter X of the 1938 book.