On Sale: Medieval Jewish Manuscripts Discovered in Afghanistan

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It seems from what has already turned up scattered on the markets of three countries that a cache of rare, medieval Jewish manuscripts have been discovered somewhere in Afghanistan. There is only very vague information where ("along the fabled Silk Road") they were found, by whom and how they left the country and whether there are more to unearth. The 200 or so documents - some in good condition and others crumpled or in fragments - are in the hands of several dealers, in London, Geneva and Jerusalem. But scholars are eager to see them donated to libraries and museums. One story of the discovery of the manuscripts has them being found in a remote cave.

Many of the pages are torn from books and are in a variety of languages, including Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian, both written in Hebrew script. They include biblical commentaries, books of Jewish law, liturgical poems, previously unknown work by Saadia Gaon, one of the most influential thinkers of the Middle Ages, as well as business letters and trading documents, such as deeds of sale.[...] The documents describe a Jewish community that lived, permanently or temporarily, in a trading station between the Muslim conquest and the Mongol invasion. [...] It was a turbulent period, he says, when a sect known as the Karaite — which rejected the Talmudic or rabbinic tradition and accepted only the Torah as holy scripture — was active.

One thing is clear, subsistence farming peasants in remote districts of Afghanistan do not have the business contacts to get stuff like this across international borders and into London and Geneva antiquities dealers stockrooms. So, who does, and where did the money generated by these illicit transactions go?

UPDATE: Medievalists.net reports that the "150 fragments" were found "purportedly by shepherds looking for sheep, in the mountains of Samangan province".

Leslie Scrivener, 'Medieval Jewish manuscripts discovered in Afghanistan include an unknown work by Saadia Gaon', Toronto Star Jan 13 2012.

Paul J Baumeister, 'Ancient Book of Jeremiah Found in Mountains of Afghanistan', Apostolic perspective, Jan 4th, 2012.

Medievalists.net, 'Medieval Jewish manuscripts discovered in Afghanistan' January 3, 2012


Vignette, one of the manuscripts.

Truth Neglect Among the Lobbyists

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It "makes little sense" to cultural property dealers' lobbyist Peter Tompa ("Afghan Neglect") "to repatriate minor artifacts to a country when so little has been done to preserve the major sites that should really matter to the culture". This is because he's found an old article which suggests that ancient sites and monuments in Afghanistan are in a parlous position. But far from the actual emphasis of what the collector depicts as "national governments and archaeological groups like the AIA [...] harassing collectors and museums" being repatriation issues, it's about preventing the ongoing stealing and looting. There is a huge difference - though of course dealers' lobbyists might see a reason for their side to blur the issue. After all, in the past they opposed US legislation intended to curb this.

It is also symptomatic of the neo-colonialist attitudes that underlie US collecting that the lobbyist judges what priorities others set by their own standards, without of course any concurrent attempt to suggest how the more "enlightened nations" (like their own) can help - except relieve them of some of the more collectably-desirable artefacts.

Ancient Coin Collectors Guild Celebrates (sic) a "Success"

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I said in the post above this that the press release "Ancient Coin Collectors Guild Celebrates Seven Years of Defending Ancient Numismatics" does not highlight its successes over the past seven years. That is not quite true, the ACCG draws to everyone's attention that

in its first days, the guild successfully opposed legislation that would have created unnecessary import restrictions on antiquities originating from Iraq and Afghanistan.

brilliant, a great "victory" for US dugup collectors.

So that's Iraq:



xx

and Afghanistan?






But US dug-up collectors don't care. Heaven forbid that the US should legislate making it impossible to sell the products there, eh?

Sources of pictures, Iraq, smuggled artefacts, trampled potsherds left by looters, Umma looters' pits trashing site, Nimrud gold, unprovenanced Ilkhanid coin (Baghdad), unprovenanced cuneiform tablet, Afghanistan, looters near Kabul, British Museum photo of artefact hunting "partners" in Afghanistan, knocked off "Gandhara" sculptures, more, Blood antiquities on sale, unprovenanced Kabul jital (medieval coin). Q- How do US coin collectors choose who writes press releases on their behalf?

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The Spengler Collection at the CPAC

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Wayne Sayles has made three public submissions to the CPAC deliberations of the Greek request to impose import controls on illegally-exported items of cultural property from Greece. In one of them he presents a totally unrelated anecdote about the activities of dealers in Afghanistan which however raises a question of direct relevance to the issue being discussed:

The late William F. Spengler was, during his career with the U.S. State Department, the highest ranking U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan. During his tenure in Kabul, Mr. Spengler became aware of a section in the local bazaar where scrap metals were traded. Among the various shops were some that accumulated coins that were then melted and sold as bullion. A few were sold as curios in local shops. Being a collector, interested in coins and their history, Mr. Spengler regularly visited the bazaar and selected individual pieces of interest that he typically purchased at the prevailing scrap or precious metal rate. Although countless thousands of specimens have been lost forever, some of these coins and their historical messages were literally saved from oblivion because of the interest of this collector. Due to the benevolence of Mr. Spengler, many of these coins are preserved today in institutions here and abroad. In fact, the sole Athenian decadrachm in the U.S. National Coin Collection at the Smithsonian was acquired in this way and donated by Mr. Spengler. [...] This anecdote is remarkable mainly because it happens all too frequently and historical coins are being lost every day due to repressive laws that make them valueless to the finder in any way other than to destroy them for their intrinsic metal value.

Well, of course Greece (the subject of the CPAC's upcoming discussion) has no such laws, as I have pointed out earlier these coin collectors are consistently ignoring the fact that current Greek legislation means that finders of items like this receive a reward.

But that is not the point. But before passing to that, let us first note how Sayles presents this; coins on the oriental market are being merely "sold for scrap" by brown-skinned peasants with simian mentalities and it is the enlightened American who like a heritage hero "saves" them by buying them from the ignorant dealers at scrap value, well below their market value at home. According to this account there are no dealers in antiquities in Kabul at the time, a few coins were sold in local shops, but only "as curios". This entire narrative framework is wholly typical of the neo-colonialist attitudes which underlie this whole brand of antiquity collecting. The enlightened American single-handedly saving civilization from a sea of Oriental ignorance.

I have already pointed out a number of times that this "melting for scrap" model is a persistent feature of the collectors' mythology. The reality is that collectors are saving the best (the most collectable) coins from nothing else than falling into the hands of other collectors (including museums) and these days, given the voracity of the market, it is the heavily worn and defaced which may be melted - in the same way as UK metal detectorists now sell off for melting down the "rubbish" finds that they do not want to collect and are unlikely to be able to sell.

Now, what was the "the highest ranking U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan" doing regularly visiting the local bazaar buying up freshly dug up ancient artefacts? We are not told when Mr Spengler was stationed in Afghanistan, so what laws applied at the time. Did he ever report any of the vendors to the authorities for having these objects so local museums (Kabul Museum had an extensive numismatic collection in those days) could acquire them, and find out where they were coming from? More to the point, does the US State Department encourage its employees to engage in the purchase and collection of ancient artefacts from the cultures of the countries where they are stationed? (Actually that is not a rhetorical question, it seems to me that since this matter has been raised by Mr Sayles, an official statement is called-for).

Sayles says that "countless thousands of specimens have been lost forever", but countless thousands of coins from hoards like the second Mir Zakah hoard (which I discussed here earlier) were indeed lost, through being scattered in thousands of ephemeral personal collections "sold to Japanese, British and American collectors for millions of dollars" (Osmund Bopearachchi, Vandalised Afghanistan, Frontline Volume 19 - Issue 06, Mar. 16 - 29, 2002 - please read the whole article, it tells a depressingly familiar story).

But Spengler seems to have gone further and did not restrict himself to "saving" (for his own collection) local finds. He is the author with Wayne Sayles of a three volume publication based partly on this collection which he presumably he made by buying up coins in Kabul. The book is on "Turkoman Figural Bronze Coins and Their Iconography" (first volume in 1992). Well, whether or not two American authors have done a good job of studying the pictures on the Turkoman coins [I have not read it], the source of these coins is somewhat questionable, were they not being brought to the Kabul market from outside Afghanistan?

Another matter however interests me even more than the above, and I think - since Sayles raises it in public in a sitting held by the State Department itself in a session debating whether or not collectors in the US should have the "right" to buy dugup antiquities which have no documentation of legal export - also requires a State Department statement. This concerns how the coins which Mr Spengler accumulated during his diplomatic service in Afghanistan reached the US? When and how were they exported out of Kabul? As 'diplomatic baggage'? Were any Afghan antiquity and cultural property laws ignored when this happened? This is not an unimportant question in the present context. Is this not an example of neo-colonialist exploitation by American diplomats of a type and scale only seen at the beginning of the last century? What is going on?

The American Numismatic Society claims it has "probably has the world's best collection of Kushano-Sasanian coins", and admits that to a great degree this is thanks to recent gifts from William F. Spengler, presumably including material obtained in Afghanistan in the manner described. Why should the world's greatest collection of such material be in the ANS collections in New York acquired in this manner and not in the country where they were dug up? To what degree do the policies of the ANS on the acquisition of material apply to the material which arrived as coming from the Spengler collection? Not all of the Spengler collection went to US institutions, some of it (originally we are told bought for scrap metal prices) is now turning a tidy profit being sold on the open market. But I think we would all like some clarification when and how it left Kabul.

Since many American lives are being lost to bring law and order to Afghanistan, should not any cultural property now held in US collections which was removed illegally from Afghanistan be returned there? What justification is there for squirrelling it away in America? Is that what America is fighting for over there?

Note too that it was precisely as a result of (ultimately unsuccessful) US attempts to block the illegal movement of material out of Afghanistan that (the so-called HR 915) that the ACCG began its activities to prevent curbs being applied to the movement of illegally exported material onto the US market. Given the association between Spengler and Sayles, it might be interesting to look at the relationship between Mr Spengler's activities and the rise of opposition to a transparent and regulated antiquities trade by groups like the ACCG.

The two 'numismatic' obituaries of W.F. Spengler which I found (here and here) omit the dates when he was in Afghanistan or details about the export of his coin collection from that country or any other where he may have served. Perhaps somebody else would like to explain how this substantial collection of ancient dugup coins left Afghanistan as the personal property of a US diplomat.

I think also when Wayne Sayles stands up at a meeting at the State Department on October 12th there are one or two searching questions the CPAC might ask him about his oral presentation. I hope they do.

Photo: Kabul Market (National Geographic)

Who's stealing Afghan cultural treasures?

I missed this when it was posted in March:

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Worth a look. Let us remember the efforts of US antiquity dealers (supported shamefully by certain US politicians) to block legislation (HR 915) to curb imports of illegally obtained material from Afghanistan into the US. The US legislation was in fact never enacted and archaeological material probably from the region is openly on sale by many US dealers and auction houses. Like for example all those coins from "Bactria" on ACCG President Bill Puetz's V-coins website. Let us remember the names of the politicians who blocked the legislation that was intended to stop US antiquity dealers profiting from the US invasion of Afghanistan: the text “ACCG has friends in Congress” names them as Mark Green, Tom Petri, Paul Ryan and adds "The ACCG is proud to count them as "Friends".

Here is the text:

13 March, 2010, 06:53
Afghanistans unique location has made it home to the world's most complex civilizations that left a rich cultural heritage. But the war-torn country has now fallen victim to looters, stealing the nations artifacts. Ever since Afghanistan was invaded by Alexander the Great, nearly 2,500 years ago, the country has seen one foreign army after another. In recent times the British, the Soviets and now the Americans. And whatever reasons they give the impact of war continues to leave a cultural scar that runs deep through Afghan civilization.
In many countries, the national museum is a source of pride where ancient treasures that explain that countrys history are on display. The Kabul museum, instead of boasting a collection that dates back hundreds of years, has bullet holes and destroyed artifacts. In the civil war, the museum was a military base repeatedly struck by rocket fire and largely destroyed. Later, the Taliban ransacked whatever items had not been moved for safe-keeping.
And now theres a new enemy smugglers working in areas where foreign forces are currently in control. Mir Ahmad Joyenda of the Afghan parliamentary international relations commission told RT: Some military forces of other countries are doing some digging at night, he added but unfortunately in the last eight years we didnt put on trial a single smuggler for stealing the cultural heritage of Afghanistan. Nobody has been arrested, nobody has been put in jail and nobody has investigated this issue.
The Afghan government simply doesnt have the resources. Seven years ago a special police unit was set up to stop the illegal excavations. But 500 officers cant do much especially when much of the digging is reportedly at night and in areas under NATO control.

Recently, around 7,000 artifacts that had been smuggled out of the country were returned to the museum. Some pieces were found in England. It was easy for the museums director to recognize them as being from Afghanistan.
"Most of these 2,000 pieces were taken by these looters who were Afghan looters they transferred them from Afghanistan to neighboring country, then to Dubai, and from Dubai to Heathrow Airport. You cant imagine one looter would be able to collect these kinds of artifacts, to steal them, to transfer them by airplane to Heathrow airport in the UK. The simple Afghan people cannot do these activities", says Omara Khan Masoudi, director of the Kabul National Museum.

But NATO forces deny the charges. Brigadier General Frederick Ben Hodges, director of operations, ISAF regional command south said "That is completely against the values we hold as an army, stealing is just not acceptable behavior. I'm not aware of it and I certainly wouldnt tolerate it".

As a former crossroads of major trade routes, Afghanistans been home to some of Asias most complex and unique civilizations. Today, there are 3,000 archaeological sites. And while that rich seam of history waits to be unearthed, those supposed to protect it will need to dig deeper to beat the looters.

So if the brigadier general is unaware of the issue, who actually is behind the looting? Who is out there at night digging, and more importantly who is behind the organization of the transport of this material out of the country and into the stockrooms of western dealers? If the latter are not doing a deal with those associated with the military, with what groups are they doing business with? Maybe Mark Green, Tom Petri and Paul Ryan would like to tell us from whom their new "Friends" get this material from?

Thin Arguments, Thin Skins Apparently

It is not difficult to observe following their discussions that collectors get awfully offended, awfully quickly. Coin Collecting archaeologist John Rieske complains on the artefact collectors' email discussion group Unidroit-L:
"I have recently received unsolicited email attcks from Mr. Barford. They are now consigned to the spam bin for permanent disposal". Apart from the ability to boast about such heights of geekdom that he has a "spam bin" as if nobody else had one, in the circumstances this is a strange and most decidely deliberately provocative thing to say.

In order to set the record straight, i have posted the actual texts of these three messages John Rieske provocatively alleges are "attacks" on my Metal-detector-nonsense-ghetto-blog so readers can see what the average coin collector regards as an "attack". It does not say much for numismatists and their dediation to scholarly debate when an attempt to establish the true facts behind a discovery is treated as an aggressive act.



Vignette: Please Miss, Barford said nasty things about collecting.....

Reiske's So-called "Taliban Hoards"

In reply to Tim Johnson's comments on Bactrian coins being more common on the US market as a result of the activities connected with the Soviet invasion and civil war, coin collecting archaeologist John Rieske writes on Moneta-L:

Not long after the Taliban's violent takeover of Afghanistan, two (at least) massive hoards were rumored to have been sold off by the Taliban. Rumors were that these Greek period coins weighed in the range of several tons each. (I heard two tons and five tons.) There soon followed a period where all Baktrian coins suffered a substantial reduction in value as a result. A question I have is this: Since these coins were sold by the then recognized government of Afghanistan by most nations at the time, why then would these coins be considered illicit?

His point is that these coins are currently "considered illegitimate by the US government and others", though does not specify under what law they "could conceivably be confiscated if a collector is found to be in possession of any in his/her collection".

Since the exact composition of these hoards are not known, this could conceivably result in any unprovenanced Baktrian coins being considered a part of these hoards. These unprovenanced Baktrian coins probably include many that were legitmately collected, but over time, and after a number of sales, the purchase records may, somewhere along the line, have become lost. So what would the rights of those who bought any of these in good faith be? This question may sound rhetorical, but the situation is already primed to come to pass.

It seems he is referring to the Mir Zakah hoards. They were discovered in 1992, and on the market in Peshawar (which is of course in Pakistan, not Afghanistan) by 1994. So this was during the period of the civil war between Mujahadin groups. The Taliban only began their rise to power 1996-8 and their international recognition was later still. Thus I do not see how it can be true that the coins were sold by the Taliban as "the recognized government of Afghanistan", if they were sold by the Taliban at this time it was when the latter were an insurgent group fighting against the Kabul government.

News reports at the time (for example an odd pro-collecting one by David Keys of April 1994 in the Independent) indicated the objects from these hoards were on the market illicitly, and the Kabul government had not sanctioned them leaving the country. Rieske claimed off-list that "the hoards were called the Taliban Hoards because they were the ones that were enriched by them", but I am not sure who was calling what "The Taliban Hoards", as a Google search of the term only reveals a heap of people that cannot distinguish the word "hoard" from "horde".

It is odd isn't it that collectors regard archaeologists who worked in Saddam's Iraq suspect, but feel its OK to put money into the coffers of the Taliban, for even in the 1990s there were numerous reports on their poor human rights record and oppression of citizens.

[In answer to my question "Do you have any of these coins?" he replies of course "I would not tell you if I did", which is perhaps an odd response if he genuinely thought any such coins had been acquired legitimately.]
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Matthew Leeming on Looting in Afghanistan

'Alexander the Great in Afghanistan’ by Matthew Leeming (Matthew Leeming is the co-author, with Bijan Omrani, of Afghanistan: A Companion and Guide).

On the right hand bank of the river is one of the most extraordinary historical sites in Afghanistan: the remains of an entire Greek city, known locally as Ai Khanoum (Moon Lady) and almost certainly Alexandria-on-the-Oxus mentioned in ancient sources. [...] during the civil war of the 1990s, the city was badly looted and today resembles a moonscape. Mechanical excavators were brought in to dig holes and the local commander offered me a Hellenistic gilt and glass bowl for US$ 80,000 dollars. It would have been worth several million dollars at auction. The commander was running a bazaar of looted antiquities. His customers were international, art dealers making the trip to the front line to buy priceless antiquities very, very cheap. No questions were asked by the buyers.

I wonder in which dealers' galleries these blood antiquities appeared with no provenance given? I wonder where they are now? Or would the no-questions-asked dealers' lobby ask us to believe that they magically dematerialise and turn into golden swans which flew off into the sunset the moment they crossed Afghanistan's political borders?

One of them said of criticisms of the way the no-questions-asked trade in antiquities was financing criminal violence against civlians:"In the mind of many American collectors, this is perhaps the most inflammatory of all claims. It is often taken very personally, as it implies a lack of patriotism," how "patriotic" is it of the antiquitist "internationalists" in their narcissistic self-interest to buy undocumented antiquities no-questions-asked on this shady international market where there is every chance that they are putting money into the pockets of foreign law-breakers and violent men? This is not a "claim", no matter how much buyers want to believe it is untrue, it is happening.

Afghanistan: Blood Antiquities

According to a post just now on the Undroit-L discussion list, the Belgian documentary "Blood Antiques" is doing the rounds again. I've discussed it here before, but just watched it again, I'd forgotten just how damning it was. Worth a second look. Louise Shelley comments on the Link TV webpage: "The lack of morality of the dealers and buyers and their complicity in terrorist financing needs a broad audience". Here is the first five minutes of the film from YouTube:

The whole film can be seen at http://www.linktv.org/programs/blood-antiques

Here's the summary: "The European art trade, synonymous with wealth and glamour, has always involved a degree of stolen and smuggled art. Now, Afghanistan’s rich cultural heritage is financing terrorism and the Taliban. From Afghans scrabbling in the sand for treasures, to the dazzling show rooms of unscrupulous dealers and private collectors – 'Blood Antiques’ uncovers one of the most outrageous illegal trades since blood diamonds".
The film features journalist Arthur Brand (2 mins 45 seconds) and some telling hidden camera work. There are many quotable quotes, it would be nice to be able to find a transcript on the Internet.

Equally interesting is the comment by Californian part-time coin dealer Dave Welsh which appeared on the Unidroit-L immediately after the original post:

As Unidroit-L Listowner, I approved this post because I believe it to be on topic and of interest to the list. As a professional numismatist however, I do not believe that the picture this documentary paints is in any way representative of what takes place in the numismatic trade. I also don't believe that it paints a fair picture of the overall standard of ethics in the art trade. Those dealers in ancient art with whom I am personally familiar, Malter Galleries for example, go to considerable trouble to ensure that they are not involved in acquisition of anything likely to have recently been excavated (as I do in acquiring coins). Dave Welsh

Who is he trying to kid? In what way is the Belgian antiquities market different from (say) the US one? I find it very significant that the very factors which the film indicates make Belgium a place where the no-questions-asked market in illicit artefacts flourishes are already in place in the US, and what is more they are the very things in which groups like the ACCG (of which Welsh is a board member) are campaigning to resist change.

In the circumstances, Welsh's choice of the Malter Galleries in California as the example of due diligence and paradigm of ethical behavior was not a clever one. Welsh should know that the late Joel Malter was arrested in the late 1990s after trying to buy antiquities that he knew to be smuggled from an undercover agent (see here and here) . Welsh himself wrote about this here:

" Joel Malter, on June 19, 1998 incautiously bought a group of smuggled Turkish antiquities officially valued at “less than $5,000” (actually much less, according to Malter) from an undercover Customs agent. This transaction would have been legal before McClain. Considering the distaste (and outright contempt)dealers have long felt for the inefficiently and corruptly administered antiquities laws of nations such as Turkey and Egypt, it is understandable that Joel felt no ethical concerns. He bought the lot, just as he had lawfully bought other similar lots in the normal course of business over many years."

Yeah, right. Perhaps Mr Welsh might like to reiterate the "considerable trouble" he goes through to ensure that he is "not involved in acquisition of anything likely to have recently been excavated (as I do in acquiring coins)". Like those Parthian coins he has been selling which he says were bought "in Spain". What "considerable trouble" does he and his coin dealing mates go to to determine how the coins and other artefacts they buy actually got to the European markets where they buy them?

(Nathan Elkins helped with the two references to the Malter arrest - thanks)

The Blood Antiquities of 9/11 Who Bought Them?

According to reports in the autumn issue of the Journal of Art Crime, based on information gathered by the German secret service, it was reported that in 1999 terrorist Mohamed Atta had allegedly tried to make some money dealing artefacts from Afghanistan to a German archaeologist. While the archaeologist did not buy them, it seems somebody else who has not come forward probably did.

Atta had moved to Germany from his native Cairo in 1992 to study at the Hamburg University of Technology. It was there that he became increasingly radicalised, eventually forming the so-called Hamburg Cell of terrorists who organ­ised the 2001 attacks on the US. Atta then spent several months in Afghanistan in late 1999 when he met Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders and trained to be a terrorist. Here, if the reports are to be believed, he might have made arrangements to sell looted Afghan antiquities in Germany, apparently in order to fund flying lessons in the United States. We have reports of one such attempted transaction, there may have been more. In 1999, Atta is said to have approached an archaeologist at the University of Göttingen offering him artefacts for sale. The unidentified researcher declined the offer. Presumably however somebody else less concerned about the ethics of obtaining such items may have accepted, maybe a German private collector. As we know somehow Atta raised the money for his flying lessons, and as a result two years after it has been suggested that he'd been peddling antiquities to no-questions-asked buyers, was the lead highjacker in the September 11th attack on the World Trade Centre.

This is the problem with the no-questions-asked market, collectors have no way of learning into whose money the money they pay for decontextualised artefacts goes, and what it will be used for. They fondly imagine that they might be "feeding starving families" in some poor village somewhere, but evidence shows that by the second decade of the current millennium, much of the trade in such items is in reality in the hands of organized criminal groups and that some of the money is going to support the activities of militants. Whoever ultimately bought the blood antiquities reportedly being offered by Atta probably does not even know it, and that it was their that their money was used to finance the 2001 attacks on the lives of innocent people. I bet the majority of antiquities dealers and collectors would not even care that this might be the case - if they cared, they would be much more careful about what they buy and from whom.

Afghanistan - Bloedantiek

I think this has been on TV before (?) but on Sunday those who can get continental TV will be able to watch a Belgian documentary "Bloedantiek" by Peter Brems and Wim Van den Eynde. They descend into the dark world of the Afghan 'blood antiquities' and show how some Belgian antiquity dealers are indirectly financing the continued war in Afghanistan. They start off in an exclusive gallery in Brussels with a hidden camera. The dealer is very forthcoming and frank: "All these pieces were looted in Afghanistan,[...]"Every object which comes from Afghanistan is by definition stolen, if you have a problem with that... but you can not buy better". Well, obviously most of their clients have no problem with silly things like buying stolen goods and the business is quite lucrative it seems. From there the reporters go off to dusty Afghan villages to meet the people that dig up these things because middlemen in the towns will give them money to do so. There is a lot of cash to be made out of the no-questions-asked collectors in richer countries like the USA, UK, Belgium and Germany.

The Taliban too know that these antiquities can be used to raise a lot of cash for their cause from no-questions-asked buyers in the West. A major antiquities dealer Jalalabad admits: "It is true that the Taliban are in this business, that's only logical [...] we have information that they recently made a big discovery in Nimruz Province".

Export of antiquities from Afghanistan is strictly prohibited without going through the proper chanels, but the illegal export follows the established smuggling routes. "Often the pieces follow the same route as the heroin," says Axel Poels inspector of the Federal Police. "When we have intercepted a heroin shipment, we can also find Afghan antiquities in them". [I have discussed this on this blog here and here].

Antwerp antiquity dealer Liban Pollet points out that until recently, vendors of stolen antiquities in Belgium had a free hand. Shamefully, the 1970 UNESCO Convention only came into force in June, and the new regulations in Belgium require all documentation of origin to be registered with a notary or bailiff. The dealer points out though that this will not provide a solution "even if a seller knows that a piece of unlawfully obtained, there is no one competent to handle the case" (Sadly Belgium's legislation is not in the IFAR database and I cannot check what it actually says).

Let us recall how hard the antiquity dealing lobby in the USA fought to keep their free hand in trading Afghan antiquities after the US-led invasion. Let us recall the politicians that sold out to them and helped stall HR 915 presumably for the sake of a few more votes and got a piece of paper from the ACCG calling them "Friends of Numismatics".

'Panorama', Sunday, September 6 at 20.10 hours on Canvas.

Sofie vanlommel België draaischijf ‘bloedantiek’ Gazet van Antwerpen, 5/9/09

Photo: poor (really?) Afghan peasants (?) selling antiquities

The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum

"The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum" a new book by Lawrence Rothfield presents the background to the events of April 2003 and the looting of the Baghdad Museum. An extract appeared today on the Iraq Crisis discussion list.

The failure to take steps to prevent the looting of the National
Museum ofIraq in Baghdad—and the less publicized, though far more devastating, ongoing looting of Iraq’sarchaeological sites—must be understood within this larger short-term context of failure to protect any number of arguably more important assets.

Rothfield shows that during the crucial early period of May–October 2002, however, no one involved in planning for the future of Iraq had a stake in cultural heritage. It simply did not register as an object of governmental concern, as something about which a policy needed to be designed. The writer places the blame on the lack of existence of a proper cultural heritage policy in the US itself:

This might not have been the case in many other antiquities-rich countries where cultural heritage enjoys a sustained high-level governmental presence in the form of ministries of culture, antiquities boards, and so on. Those cultural bureaucracies have the visibility, clout, and permanency to enable them to develop standing relationships, educational programs, and even integrated operations with military forces, all designed to promote heritage protection. [...] just as our military posture is different from those of other countries, so is our attitude to our heritage—and more generally, to our culture. American suspicion of governmental involvement in cultural matters is deeply engrained, enshrined in the First Amendment. Indeed, the quasi-official line has long been that America has no cultural policy; when in 1999 the Pew Charitable Trusts announced an initiative to shape one, the foundation was savaged as advocating a Soviet-style ministry of culture. This deep-rooted antipathy is reflected in the absence of any cabinet-level post representing the public interest in culture, and in the relatively minor roles in cultural life played by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the President’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee, and other minor federal or quasi-federal offices.Not only are America’s cultural bureaucracies weak, scattered, and uncoordinated, but they operate under very restricted mandates dealing with trade, conservation, domestic funding of the arts, and other peacetime issues affecting cultural goods. They are neither responsible for nor designed to address wartime or postwar situations. Consequently, governmental offices administering cultural heritage did not bring themselves to the attention of those planning for the upcoming conflict—even when working within the same agency.

Rothfield's analysis of the US situation may go some way to explaining why there seem to be the attitudes we find among collectors from the States about the archaeological resource protection legislation of other countries where such systems aree in place and better organized than in the USA. Does this failure to create a system make the USA more "enlightened" than those other countries, or the converse?

Antiquity Collectors Helping Finance the Taliban Revival?

ABC News correspondent Gretchen Peters based in Pakistan and Afghanistan has a book coming out soon, the “Seeds of Terror” (pub May 12 2009) which looks at the resurgence of the Taliban and in particular its financing by illegal activities such as involvement in the illicit drugs trade. The pre-publication blurb says that the book was written on the basis of hundreds of interviews with Taliban fighters, smugglers, and law enforcement and intelligence agents, as well as utilizing intelligence reports. In it she traces the illicit activities of the taliban "from vast poppy fields in southern Afghanistan to heroin labs run by Taliban commanders, from drug convoys armed with Stinger missiles to the money launderers of Karachi and Dubai”. Seeds of Terror makes the case that if the western world ever hopes to beat them, it must make every effort to cut terrorists off from their illicit means of financing their activities. Peters argues that the failure to halt this money flow to terrorist networks is "the single greatest failure in the war on terror," and argues that staunching the flood of money from illicit activities into terrorist coffers is essential. She contends that the "union of narco-traffickers, terrorist groups, and the international criminal underworld is the new axis of evil."

On Gretchen Peters’ blog there is a parallel article about “The criminals running the Af-Pak border” which is worth reading. Among other things, she writes:

In the last eight years, the Afghan Taliban have greatly expanded their illicit activities, morphing into a force more violent and ruthless than when they were in power from 1996 to 2001 and building up an economic empire worth almost half a billion dollars. Their activities are diverse: In some parts of the south, they collaborate with drug traffickers to dictate poppy output. They provide armed protection for opium convoys leaving Afghanistan's farm areas and protect heroin labs along the Pakistan border. In addition, they work with kidnapping rings that have snared diplomats, journalists, U.S. contractors, and wealthy local businessmen. They cooperate with gunrunners, human traffickers, and the smuggling gangs that illegally export millions of dollars worth of Afghan antiquities.

Readers will remember that the ACCG has been very free with its "Friends of Numismatics" award to US congressmen who recently opposed the proposed introduction (HR 915) of stricter controls over the import of antiquities from Afghanistan into the US. Now a few years on, there is emerging information that it is precisely the trafficking of these antiquities to the no-questions-asked markets of the west which is contributing to the financing of the enemies of America, that is buying them weapons and explosive. Let us remember their names, these "Friends of numismatists", the text “ACCG has friends in Congress” names them as Mark Green, Tom Petri, Paul Ryan and adds "The ACCG is proud to count them as "Friends"." I am sure they were not alone in opposing the introduction of stricter regulation of the market in antiquities from Afghanistan. I hope the publication of Ms Peters' book is accompanied by the publication of a full list of US lawmakers who opposed HR 915. Who were these people that put the self-interest of a minority group of traders and collectors over the need to stem the flow of dollars to lawbreakers?

On ACCG President Bill Puetz’s Vcoins online coin store at the moment, the search engine reveals that there are about 180 coins from “Bactria” (an ancient polity, most of the central urbanised area of which falls into modern Afghanistan). They are collectively worth more than $10 000. Very few of them however have any kind of documented provenance capable of demonstrating they left the region before the rise of the Taliban. Ebay has 29 at the moment, and the same comments apply. The total value of the latter is some $20 000. So where do they come from? How do potential customers of these stores know they are not putting money into the pockets of the Taliban and other illegal groups (for example in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan)? The collector may wish to persuade themselves that this "cannot be" the case, but to what extent is that simply short-sighted wishful thinking?

Photo: The fruits of the seeds of terror - financed in part by no-questions-asked portable antiquities collectors? How can they be sure?

At a Crossroad of Civilization: money into whose pockets?

The global market in unprovenanced artefacts is voracious and many means are adopted by the less-that-ethical to cash in on this. In Afghanistan, the “Crossroads of Civilzation”, looting and smuggling have been going on for years, especially during the civil war of 1992-1996 and then under the rule of the Taliban (1996-2001). Sadly, the US-led invasion of 2001 “Operation Enduring Freedom”, and the presence there of a UN peace-keeping force have done little to curb it. It is thought that most of the looted items are smuggled to neighbouring Pakistan before reaching private collectors in rich Gulf or Western countries. US legislators were preparing to pass “H.R. 915 [109th]: Cultural Conservation of the Crossroads of Civilization Act”
to prevent the US trade from benefiting from the undocumented movement of cultural property from Afghanistan, but in the end failed to do so.

Last week the National Museum at Herat the second largest city in Afghanistan was robbed. The thieves stole 22 museum exhibits including clay, metal and stone artefacts from the pre-Islamic, Ghaznavid and Timurid eras. Two suspects were taken into custody for interrogation. One of them, it was admitted at a press conference last week, has died in prison “under unclear circumstances”. Officials from the Afghan Ministry of Culture are suggesting that he was murdered to silence him and treats this as evidence that they are dealing with very dangerous criminals (they use the term “gang”).

Cases like this once again raise the question of the association between the trade in undocumented antiquities and criminal activity. Into whose pockets are the proceeds from the sale of such items going? Opponents of HR915 and other such measures to help clean up this trade should be required by concerned members of the public to address that question.

Badger State collectors want loot

In May 2006, the Wisconsin Republican Party passed a resolution intended to block moves by countries whose archaeological and cultural resources are being stripped to feed the US collectors’ market to protect their cultural assets.

“The Republican Party of Wisconsin, in convention assembled, asks lawmakers to pass a bill exempting art, books, coins, militaria, pottery, stamps, weapons and other common antique collectibles for consideration from future import restriction and cultural property laws and treaties.”

Full text here.

This affirmation of a group of citizens of the US of their “right” to spit in the face of the international community is of course treated by the US collectors’ and dealers’ lobby as a great “victory”. Does the Badger State, Wisconsin not have any of its own cultural heritage worth preserving that some of its citizens feel the need to grab little pieces of everybody else’s instead? Shame on those who passed such a scandalous resolution showing such a woeful grasp on the issues involved and so little regard for the protection of the cultural heritage. Heaven help the cultural heritage of Wisconsin state if the individuals who passed this resolution should ever gain power over it.

So who was behind this? It is unlikely to come as any surprise to learn that once again, it was the US ancient coin collectors’ lobbyists, who else? The ACCG through its representative Jim McGarigle apparently arranged this so-called “Collectors Rights Resolution” (sic) with Republican politicians Congressmen Mark Green, Tom Petri and Paul Ryan. For their efforts these three gentlemen received the ACCG “Friend of Numismatics award” in 2006. It is worth noting that in addition to supporting this scandalous resolution, all three of them opposed, apparently also on behalf of coin collectors, HR-915 which, if successful, would have imposed import restrictions on various ancient coins of Afghan origin. Coin collectors however are happy that this never became law and they are free to purchase the many choice coins apparently from this “crossroads of civilization” which now relatively frequently appear on the US markets after the American invasion.

I wonder what Green, Petrie and Ryan think export licences are for? Would they support the abolishment of export controls from their own country? With some important elections coming up soon over there, it might be an opportunity to hear the candidates' opinions on these matters.