Preservationists with "Personality Disorders"

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Dugup coin dealer Sayles tries to transform a campaign against the trade in illicitly and illegally obtained artefacts and the indiscriminate no-questions-asked practices which shield it into one against "collecting" generally. That of course does not bear scrutiny, the evidence of the deceit is far too abundant. So, running out of other arguments, he tries the ad hominem. He calls calls to clean up the antiquities trade from the 1980s "a hysteria of ideological excess":

Since then, any opposing thought has been ruthlessly ridiculed and attacked with increasing hostility. Today, the level of attacks against those who oppose national control of their personal cultural freedom [to benefit from the illicit trade in antiquities - PMB] has seriously escalated and that "crusade" is being led by ultraists. Not the least of these are a group of internet trolls who suffer from acute personality disorders and lack any other purpose in life.

Typical ad hominem, and reliant on his readers accepting uncritically the assumption that anyone who opposes the illicit trade in antiquities must in some way be mentally challenged. After all, it seems apparent from their reactions that for many of them, the disappearance of such artefacts from the market would means "the end of the hobby".

Another assumption accepted by the coiney readers of such things is that there would be nobody on the other side (their side - working in support of the maintenance of a no-questions-asked market) who could be considered as "ultraist" or one could suspect of having any kind of personality disorder. Such as one leading them to write of "goose-stepping" archaeologists, dressed in "space cadet" uniforms, and who will be hanging by the neck from a "lamppost on Constitution Avenue" when the oppressed American masses rise up against a corrupt political system and other such stuff (most of the posts to which I link have been deleted by their authors when attention was drawn to them). Then we have the comparison between attempts to clean up the antiquities market and the most shameful of the US witch trials of the seventeenth century. These are things written by supporters of no-questions-asked coin-dealing, and by members of the Board of Directors of the ACCG. Perusal of such lists as Moneta-L, Unidroit-L (especially) and Numismatica-L will soon reveal a number of people with a style of writing about preservationists and their own (and others') governments which also betray some sort of serious problems with coping with reality.

To return to preservationists, Sayles' own closests sidekick Dealer Dave had his psychologist wife diagnose "one notorious anticollecting archaeo-blogger" on the basis of - not an interview with him, nor any extensive reading what he himself writes and publishes - but "some of what was posted in my blog regarding the utterances" of the subject. So the methodology of Californian psychologists is to diagnose subjects on the basis of hearsay, what others say of them (perhaps on learning that we might think it fortunate that Susan Welsh seems from her internet profile not to be working in psychology anywhere). Her diagnosis of this person's personality based on such sources can be read online (apparently she concludes that "he is psychologically "very interesting"...). Peter Tompa calls some preservationists who have different views from his own unstable ideas "cranks" who are not to be taken seriously.

This is it, isn't it? By trying to label those who question policies that encourage and shield the trade in illicit antiquities merely "cranks" and "trolls with personality problems", Sayles, Tompa, Welsh and their ilk try to persuade onlookers "not to take such things seriously". They hope that by using such misdirection to persuade readers that there "is no problem", that the problem is wholly made up by hostile and mentally unstable individuals. That the holes in the Roman town of Archar and the Egyptian site at El Hibeh are all imaginary and in no way connected with the artefacts freshly "surfacing" (from underground) on the market. Why, those they will tell anyone who asks - but few do - were made Once Upon A Time by the Coin Elves under the secret mountains. No "Troll" has ever seen a Coin Elf (well, they wouldn't would they?) , but the coineys know this magical sustainable source of artefacts is there.

Laundering the Loot

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There was an interview on Channel 4 News with Christos Tsirogiannis (researcher in illicit antiquities and repatriation cases at Cambridge University, and formerly archaeologist with the Greek police squad). He warned that the economic recession will lead, in the countries that have an archaeological record rich with the remains of ancient civilisations (such as Greece, Italy and Egypt) we are going to see big problems with looting of sites and theft from collections. "In Greece, this is connected with the financial situation. We will have more of such things coming up in the next few months", he said. In the case of the Olympia Museum theft, he suggests: "The people who stole this are uneducated people with no money, who are not aware it will be difficult to give these objects to the market as they are recorded, and there are pictures of them. They do it for money, but they are not aware it will be really difficult to get rid of them". He then goes on to describe possible smuggling routes:

It may be the case that some of them end up in refrigeration trucks transporting food in order to be smuggled across borders, through Turkey and the former Yugoslavia, before reaching Europe where they are likely to fetch up a higher price. Another popular route for other goods illegally seized or excavated from Asia, Mr Tsirogiannis said, is aboard ships to Italy. From there they may make their way to Switzerland, and from there, he said, they may be laundered in auctions in London and New York before being sold to private museums and collectors.

"Richard Ellis (former Scotland Yard detective who set up the Metropolitan Police's Art and Antiques Squad, now a specialist art and antiquities crime investigator) was also interviewed. He said that art and antiquities theft

"has become an organised crime business". Criminal business in illicit and stolen antiquities is fast rivalling the illicit trade in fine art in terms of cost and scale, and with culture thieves, middlemen and dealers taking advantage of the increasingly deteriorating economic situation in modern countries occupying the territories of some of the world's most ancient civilisations, the trade is likely to continue to boom. Channel 4 adds: "While experts say it is almost impossible to estimate the true cost of the trade in illicit antiquities, some say costs can vary between $50 million to $1 billion".

According to Mr Ellis, many [sites/museums] are looted or excavated by poorer local people looking to make some fast yet small amounts of cash, before being sold on to intermediaries. The real mark up, he says, comes in the stage after that, after they have been passed on to dealers. From here they can end up in auction houses or with private collectors, having changed hands for millions of dollars. In some cases, Mr Ellis said, collectors are aware they are trading in illegal goods, despite a rise in 'due dilligence' to establish the provenance of items.

Now, Mr Ellis told Channel 4 News, "the incentive is there to make money in Greece [...] I am sure the current economic situation is Greece is triggering people to become more active [in this type of illegal activity]". "I would expect these objects are going to get moved. It's a transitional country for other stolen goods, and they can go west or east", Mr Ellis said.

Attempted reconstruction of some possible smuggling routes
for Classical and Byzantine antiquities from Greece

So, before passing onto - for example - the US market, a freshly illegally dugup artefact, or one recently stolen from a museum or private collection, may have clandestinely passed through several countries on their way out of Greece. It is pretty obvious that not every case of the unlawful export of objects from Greece will be detected at the Greek borders. It is unreasonable to expect Greek Customs to unload every truck of - for example - frozen kalmary or meat leaving the country at the roadside to check whether there are small antiquities hidden right at the back, or strip search every tourist and business traveller leaving the country. If it were possible to stop this so easily, there would have been no need for a 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. In order therefore to combat culture theft, it is necessary to establish the origins of objects of types that are found in a source country like Greece coming onto the market through other countries. Unless something can be documented as having legally entered Ruritania from Greece, or at least the import into Ruritania was so long ago that investigation is not going to determine how it got there and is a waste of time, its export to an external market should be seen as suspect. Obviously legislation intending to combat the international trade needs to take into account the mobility of the artefacts ("portable antiquities") in recent times, and the ability of cultural criminals to 'launder items' by taking them through other countries such as Switzerland and the German markets.

It should be noted that it is PRECISELY this aspect of the legislation that dealers lobbyists (ACCG and Peter Tompa's employers the PNG in particular) are currently actively fighting. This shows a less-than-willingness to co-operate in cutting down the illicit trade by dealing with laundering. It is also an area where current legislation and regulation, both national and international are woefully lacking, being stuck in a mental time-warp as though it was still the 1960s.

More Antiquities Looted from Italy Leave the Hands of US Collectors and Dealers

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There seem to be huge quantities of looted Classical antiquities in US hands. A January 20 press announcement by Italian authorities summarises recent results in the fight with unlawfully exported items in US hands. This time we learn of the return of more than 200 antiquities of various sizes from US museums, companies, collectors and dealers — all the product of illegal excavation or theft. The Chasing Aphrodite blog has a lengthy article on it.

The article discusses some of the returned objects. The two biggest items were statues relinquished by the health insurance provider Humana, which had stood apparently for over 20 years in the lobby of its Louisville headquarters. They illustrate very well the problem of stolen and looted artefacts being offered to uncritical buyers on the no-questions-asked market. The company had in good faith "acquired the statues in 1984 from a New York Gallery". It turns out on investigation that one of them, a first century marble statue, had been illegally excavated in Lazio, Italy and apparently had passed through the hands of the convicted antiquities trafficker Giacomo Medici. The other, a second century sculpture of Fortuna, had been stolen in October 1986 from an opera house in Rome.

The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s former antiquities curator Dietrich von Bothner was known to have a large private collection of antiquities. Some of the vase fragments in his possession reportedly match vases already returned by American museums. The next batch of items returned recently was a group of forty pieces which the Met had obtained as "the property of a deceased private collector" which it is being reported had been a small part of this collection. What happened to the rest?

Of potentially greater significance was the third batch. This was reportedly of 170 objects and fragments returned by the Princeton University Art Museum. According to the Chasing Aphrodite blog these included:

an askos-shaped talus; two statues of women, including one playing a tambourine and the other a lyre; a white pithos with red figures representing animals; and 166 fragments from vases and architectural elements. The returns appear to be related to the investigation of Edoardo Almagià, the Princeton alum and antiquities dealer who, along with Princeton antiquities curator Michael Padgett, are targets of an investigation by Italian authorities.

As the Chasing Aphrodite bloggers explain, the release states that these objects:

“were identified in previous surveys conducted by the [Carabinieri] of the possessions of an Italian-American citizen, resident of New York, who has been the subject of the seizure of numerous archaeological finds, in New York and Rome, and copious documentation with photographic material pertaining to sales and loans made ​​by him.” These seized documents have allowed investigators to trace looted antiquities to prestigious American museums like the Met and Princeton, the release says, adding that the Carabinieri “have thus established, irrefutably, the origin of the objects from illicit excavations made ​​in Italy.”

The authors go on to remark that works that have passed through Almagia's hands have according to researchers also been traced to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Tampa Museum of Art and the Indiana University Art Museum.

In addition, New York antiquities dealer Jerome Eisenberg (he of Royal-Athena Gallery) has reportedly returned to Italy a bronze statue being sold for $22,500 known as the Venus of St. John Perareto, which he had bought from an unnamed dealer in Freiburg, Germany in 1982. This on further investigation turns out to have been stolen from a museum in Rimini in 1962.

As the authors note, in the hands of Italian authorities are now a series of archives of individuals involved in the antiquities trade. The Almagia Archive joins the "trove of documents, photographs and objects that Italian investigators have seized from antiquities dealers Robin Symes, Robert Hecht, Gianfranco Becchina and Giacomo Medici". They raise the question of what to do with this vast amount of information about certain sectors of the antiquities trade.

Hat-Tip: David Gill

Vignette: The Pantheon and Pheonix, the badge of the Cultural Property Protection Carabinieri, Photo: Culture cop (nice uniform now I look at it, what's the hat-badge?)

Logic Never Was their Strong Point

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Antiquities dealers' paid lobbyist Peter Tompa seems only now to have noticed Raimund Karl's text "http://www.ngoe.at/publikationen/HEN_Karl.pdf">On the Highway to Hell: Thoughts on the Unintended Consequences for Portable Antiquities of Section 11 (1) Austrian Denkmalschutzgesetz". He does not indicate what drew his attention to it.

He notes that Karl "concludes that a change in Austrian law has led metal detectorists to stop reporting finds they would otherwise report" before adding a comment of his own:

After reading his article, one might conclude that Professor Karl seems to be blessed with common sense that has detoured him away from the "highway to hell" that has been taken by some of his more ideological colleagues in the archaeological community.

Yet, not so long ago Tompa was advocating, was he not, that in order to fight looting and illicit antiquities, instead of the dealers and collectors it was precisely "metal detectorists" that should be "regulated" (here for example, here too - where metal detecting is equated with lax control due to government "corruption"). This is what he was telling coineys to write to the CPAC too. So if Tompa now agrees with Professor Karl that this regulation of detectorists is in some way a "Highway to Hell", it seems to me that he should be staying by the original concept of cleaning up the antiquities market and encourage responsible and transparent collecting. What is "ideological" in that?

It seems to me however that to get his pay cheque from the dealers' associations, writing what is internally logical is not a requirement, the idea is apparently to write just any old stuff to keep the dealers' clients from asking too many questions of the dealers. Create a fog-screen, and for that purpose the more confusing his own position is, the better. After all, the intention is not to engage in debate and dialogue, but avoid that at all costs.

As for getting information from those in a given country who are carrying out an activity illegally, I rather think that is a matter for the police.

US Import Restrictions Only Apply to Illicitly Exported Items

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The accusation that many coineys with educations gained in US schools have fluff for brains seems to be increasingly confirmed not only by the ease with which their self-appointed leaders manage to convince them with false admonitions of "what the new MOU will mean for YOU" which they never check, but also by the flow of whingeing pseudo-justifications which has recently been emerging from the milieu. Peter Tompa now asks: Do Import Restrictions Only Apply to "Illicitly Exported" Items?

Do MOU's only apply to "illicitly exported" artifacts as archaeo-blogger Paul Barford has claimed? No. In fact, import restrictions as applied by US Customs bar entry of coins openly and legitimately sold in markets abroad merely because they are of a type on a designated list.

Whoah, whoah. What is the CONNECTION between "openly and legitimately sold" within a country and "openly and legitimately exported"? None. As these clowns well know. The coiney lobbyist whinges on:

First, for coins coming directly from the country for which import restrictions are granted, there is an exception if they are accompanied with an export permit.

"OK, your starter for ten, fingers on the buzzers: "what do we call a coin exported from a country which has export restrictions which is accompanied by an export licence?"..." [buzzzz]
"Yes, Oxford Magdalene, "licitly exported". That is the correct answer".

"Fingers on the buzzers, now what do we call a coin exported from a country which has export restrictions which has been taken out of the country without getting an export licence?" [buzzz] "No, I am sorry Wisconsin Numismatic Academy, the correct answer is "illicitly exported", bad luck".

"Fingers on the buzzers again, what is the correct legal term for a coin removed from a country which does not issue export licences for archaeological artefacts and therefore has none? Anyone?" " [buzzz] "Yes, Wisconsin... No... no. No, the correct answer is that we call such a coin 'illicitly exported', or simply smuggled, bad luck again..."
[inaudible]

"No, Wisconsin, if it left the source country illegally, it makes no difference whether it passed through another country - since it arrived there illicitly; can we pass on t..."

[inaudible] "No, Wisconsin, the ten year "get out clause" as you put it is just a local convenience, which does not negate the principles established by the international agreement, so if we could... and there is no need for that sort of language, ...".
[raises eyebrow, discretely makes note to producer never to ask these rowdy peabrains back to University Challenge].

Three days later, the TV production company got an indignant letter from the principal numismatist of the Wisconsin Coin Academy, protesting:

The import restrictions discussed on the programme are both illogical and themselves definitely illicit, according to the 1983 CCPIA implementing US accession to the 1970 UNESCO Convention. That [is a] very clear contravention of the terms of the CCPIA...

They ignored the letter as the writings of a madman of course.

Basically, if you have an antiquity of a type which is on the designated lists (which certainly contain many, many more categories than just a few scrappy coins) and you want to import it into the US either get the seller to obtain an export licence, or failing that as the CCPIA (19 U.S.C. 2601 et seq.) SECTION 2606, Import Restrictions, (a) Documentation of lawful exportation (note that title, Peter Tompa in particular) states: "unless the State Party issues a certification or other documentation which certifies that such exportation was not in violation of the laws of the State Party". Note this has nothing to do with "open and legitimate sale within the country". Neither has it anything in the least connected with its 'provenance' or collecting history. This is purely and simply about lawful export (note that title everybody, Peter Tompa and coin dealers in particular).

All is not lost even if you've not got one of those, the actual text of the CCPIA contains a useful get-out clause [2606(c)(1)(B)] "a statement provided by the consignor, or person who sold the material to the importer, which states the date, or, if not known, his belief, that the material was exported from the State Party not less than ten years before the date of entry into the United States, and the reasons on which the statement is based". Not even on oath, not even asking for any supporting material to be supplied. Basically scribbling down some (could be made-up) story of innocence.

Now the reason the silly whingers are complaining about even this is that they reckon a fellow dealer scribbling such a note on a company letterhead would - they assert - cost "more than the coin itself". So who else, except dumber-than-my-cat coineys, would do business with a seller that would charge you an arm and a leg for putting down a few words on paper why the circumstances of the sale of these particular coins are not breaking the law? How much were Spink's charging to scribble a note about the coins seized in Baltimore on their way to the ACCG? Did they not know the US law on the imports of such items and ignored it? Not very professional, is it?

Remember what article 3 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention, implemented in the US by the CCPIA, says.

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UPDATE 28.11.11: Dealer Dave attempts to defend the logic of Peter Tompa by incomplete sentences (at the beginning of his "commentary" to a lengthy cut-and-paste) and tekkie language (at the end of his insulting "commentary" to a lengthy cut-and-paste). Between them however is nothing which refutes the notion that commerce in objects removed from a country in disregard of its export licensing procedures is anything except illicit. Perhaps instead of insulting and merely ridiculing those whose views differ (from those of which he wants to convince coineys and others), it might be more useful to actually indicate, citing chapter and verse, where I am wrong here instead of merely sniping without providing justification [except his wholly irrelevant assertion that Peter Tompa probably earns "ten times as much" as me for lobbying on behalf of the coin sellers. He probably does, that does not make doing what he does right].

UPDATE 28.11.11 (bis)
"Any reader interested in finding out the omitted details will have little difficulty doing that". Yes, I suppose not quoting (this time) beyond the first sentence and not giving a link saves the coiney readers of the coin dealer's blog from having to bother their confused brains about what it says here about what an "illicit export" is. Any readers he has who have not got fluff for brains will take note of his manipulation and whether the Dealer Dave "Ancient Coins" blog or this PACHI blog is a better source of information for responsible collectors on what the law actually says.

Reactions to the Baltimore Illegal Coin Import Stunt Case Decision

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The news that a decision had been reached in the ACCG Baltimore Illegal Coin Import Stunt Case seems to have reached Peter Tompa yesterday (Monday) morning. The news went up on the ACCG website yesterday at an unspecified time: "Decision Released in Baltimore Litigation ACCG website, 8th August 2011.

Dave Welsh was one of the first to write at length about it with his usual fire-and-brimstone approach (no mention of stringing people up this time) at 12:16 AM PT: He calls it "A Disastrous Legal Decision". Since this is the only comment so far which looks to the future, I would like to discuss some of the things he suggests in a later post.

Peter Tompa on his own Cultural Property Observer blog writes at 5:19 AM: "Not for Me to Decide...", referring to the District Court's judge's assessment that she has not the authority to judge the President of the USA.

Then it was Rick St Hilaire's turn at 1:01 AM EST: "Judge Dismisses ACCG Challenge to Cultural Property Import Protections - Acknowledges President's Foreign Policy Role in MoU Process". he notes three important points about the decision.

David Gill has a short note: Baltimore Test Case Rejected

I wrote a piece between trying to plough through the 52 pages of the Judge's decision (not there yet) and a rather nice bottle of red which I'd opened to celebrate.

Wayne Sayles, who we may suspect was in fact the main instigator of the whole action, has a surprisingly magnanimous approach to the whole affair, at 11:31 AM EST: "The Morning After"

Then Peter Tompa again: "Legal Times Blog About ACCG Decision" about a blog by Zoe Tillmann "Coin Collectors' Guild Loses Bid to Import 1,000-Year-Old Coins"

Blake dismissed claims brought under the Administrative Procedure Act, writing that decisions made pursuant to presidential authority weren’t subject to judicial review. Regarding whether the State Department exceeded its authority, Blake found that the law put the burden on the importer to prove the artifacts are legitimate, “and prohibits the importation of those objects if they cannot meet that burden.”

The guild also argued that the restrictions amounted to a violation of the First Amendment because the inscriptions and motifs on the coins are “information or speech” and convey content [which has got to be one of the stupidest justifications for no-questions-asked collecting on the planet - PMB]. Blake disagreed. “Even if ancient coins convey information about ancient societies, the government’s interest in combating the pillage of archaeological materials is unrelated to the suppression of the flow of that information,” she wrote.

I'm interested to see what Kimberley Alderman ("Cultural Property Law Deathmatch: The Ancient Coin Collectors Guild v. The State Department" - "it's the equivalent of cultural property lawyer porn"), Derek Fincham, and a few others will make of it.

Vignette: Nice bottle of Italian red to celebrate.

UPDATE: Kimberley adds her comments: Ancient Coin Import Restriction Test Case Dismissed "While the precise basis for the dismissal is a little different than what I had explored, it arises out of the same problem with this particular test case. The Plaintiffs weren’t just asking for a limited decision about a specific seizure; they were looking for a broader decision about coin import restrictions. The Court determined it didn’t have the authority to issue one". So how much did making the gesture of submitting a useless complaint cost US collectors and dealers who donated the coins for the "benefit auctions"?
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Don't Become Slave Oil: Support the ACCG

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Another version of Evil Gubn'mint Catastrophism from the coiney camp, this time with an environmental twist. If ya don't want to see 45% of the world population in chains as Slave Oil runs out, ya'd better start supporting the ACCG in its aim to keep illegally exported ancient coins on da market. A classic of the genre which I suspects well illustrates the thought processes of the average ACCG supporter.

This is not tin hat stuff either, you just have to look and dig to find this out.

I beg to differ. (We note that the writer's pitchfork and torches environmental alarmism does not run to thinking of ways to slow the rate at which oil - a finite resource too - runs out.) I think somebody's going to have a lot of free time on their hands when Fox takes Glenn Beck off the air.

All this, let us note, is to justify coineys digging around in a dead woman's email correspondence to bolster their case for allowing the import of illegally exported archaeological artefacts onto the US no-questions-asked antiquities market.
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Looted Art, the never-ending story

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Josh Rothman in the Boston Globe summarises a recent article ('Art in the Time of War') by British historian Richard J. Evans in The National Interest on the looting and destruction of art down through the ages from late antiquity through Napoleon and the Nazis, up to modern Iraq and Egypt. Twentieth -century warfare has led to the wholesale destruction of cities and the collections they contained by bombing and shelling.

The Nazis looted art on a massive scale never before seen in history, and squabbled among themselves over the gems of Europe's museums and private collections. There was so much stolen art that it was often treated carelessly -- the German governor of occupied Poland, Hans Frank, had to be reprimanded by a Nazi art historian "for hanging a painting by Leonardo da Vinci above a radiator". A surprisingly large amount of the art displaced by the World Wars has been returned, not necessarily to its owners, but at least to its country of origin.

Evans notes, the looting and destruction of art continues with every new conflict, as we saw in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, with its shocking images of the looting and destruction of the museum and library collections there. He quotes the journalist Robert Fisk, who wrote, in his forward to The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq:

I was among the first to enter the looted Baghdad archaeological museum, crunching my way through piles of smashed Babylonian pots and broken Greek statues. I watched the Islamic library of Baghdad consumed by fire -- 14th and 15th century Korans embraced by flames so bright that it hurt my eyes to look into the inferno. And I have spent days trudging through the looters’ pits and tunnels of Samaria, vast cities dug up, their precious remains smashed open -- thousands upon thousands of magnificent clay jars, their necks as graceful as a heron’s, all broken open for gold or hurled to one side as the hunters burrowed ever deeper for ever older treasures.

The looting of art continues apace; if it's no longer motivated by nationalist fervor, it's still driven by personal greed. By 2005, four thousand of the 15,000 artworks looted from the Baghdad Museum in 2003 had been found. A thousand were found in the United States, and 600 in Italy. Many of them, Evans writes, were "pillaged by order from private collectors and their agents".

Of course antiquity collectors and their "agents" (antiquity dealers) bend over backwards to deny that they are in any way responsible for the existence of an antiquities market. It stands to reason that all those Mesopotamian bits of carved stone and impressed clay tablets cannot be selling themselves.

Iraq Seeks International Treaty Protecting Archaeological Artefacts

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Iraq is reportedly seeking a new international agreement protecting antiquities as a response to the ongoing looting of saleable antiquities from archaeological sites there (Radio Free Europe, 'Iraq Seeks International Treaty Protecting Antique Artifacts', April 20th 2011).

Iraq wants to conclude a new international agreement that will designate the dealing of antique Iraqi artifacts a crime, RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq reports. Iraqi officials said the goal is to preserve the country's heritage from thieves and smugglers. Baha al-Mayyah, an adviser at the Iraqi Tourism and Historic Monuments Ministry, told RFE/RL on April 18 that "Archaeological sites are still in danger of being looted and are subject to illegal excavations in many places." He said "the government is working on the possibility of concluding new international agreements that will designate dealing in ancient Iraqi artifacts a crime." [...] Al-Mayyah criticized the international community for not doing enough to deter smugglers and looters. He said Iraq wants to abolish the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property [...] Iraq plans to convene an international conference at the end of this year in Baghdad to discuss the creation of a new international organization. "Its task would be to push for the cancellation or the amendment of the 1970 convention," al-Mayyah said. "It would have as members all the countries of the world that are facing problems with the looting and smuggling of their heritage."

This would be a very interesting move. It is quite clear that a convention discussed and written in the late 1960s cannot possibly be applied to the changed antiquities market (especially in its dominating no-questions-asked variant) that has developed since the mid 1970s and then was again completely transformed in the mid 1990s by internet trading. It is totally inadequate to the task. This is quite apart from the fact that the US, one of the largest potential markets for illicitly acquired, and exported dugup antiquities refuses to implement it properly but only in a form which is a "compromise" with their own huge and lucrative no-questions-asked antiquities trade. The time for new agreements and standards on the international trade of this sort of material was yesterday. Whether or not US antiquity dealers want it or not, it's time to do some serious thinking about this problem while there is still some of the archaeological resource in the ground left to save from commercial looting.

Munich Dealer Loses Some of his Stock

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Over in Bavaria, apparently the 'Lootier Land' of Germany where the Minister of Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology boasts of the free trade in antiquities obtaining there (see here and here), one of the dealers has lost a bit of his stock. According to 'Monsters and Critics', when challenged, it turns out he was unable to show how a Mesopotamian item he was in possession of in 2004 had left Iraq ('Germany returns antique battleaxe to Iraq', Monsters and Critics, Feb 9, 2011). The dealer's name is not given.

The item in question, a decorated axe was found by police in 2004, and after the dealer was unable to produce any document confirming legitimate origins, was sent to the Roman-Germanic Museum in Mainz for evaluation. The Museum pronounced it 'typical of the military equipment used by early Mesopotamian city states'. The object was accordingly returned to Iraq on Wednesday following several years of legal limbo. The Iraqi ambassador Hussain Mahmood Fadhlalla al-Khateeb accepting the object said it was "important to crack down on trafficking in stolen goods, as this was an income stream for terrorist groups".

Can Bavarian Minister of Economic Affairs, Martin Zeil Read English?

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According to his mates in the ACCG:

Bavarian Minister of Economic Affairs, Martin Zeil, registered his government's opposition to import restrictions on coins saying in a letter to the State Department that proposed restrictions "would negatively impact the legitimate numismatic trade between Germany and the United States of America and also people to people contacts between US and German citizens." He pointed out that because of the MOU's overly repressive documentation requirements "Legal trade would then hardly be possible between Germany and the United States." Collectors argue that over the past 600 years literally millions of ancient coins have been bought and sold without any requirement for chain of ownership documentation (provenance).

I wonder whether the Bavarian Minister of Economic Affairs, Martin Zeil, can actually read English? Or is he just signing what somebody has pushed under his nose? To what "overly repressive documentation requirements" is he referring? An export licence or dealer's declaration? ("overly"?). This "chain of ownership documentation", where in the CPIA is any mention made of this? In what way does an MOU between Italy and the US actually impact the numismatic trade between Bavaria and the US? (actual wording of the CCPIA art 307 please, not made up stuff). What on earth is this German guy talking about? Who voted for him, Bavarian coin elves?
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Twelve Wisconsin Philistines in Congress

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Well this has to be the oddest piece of news ever to leave the shores of the United States. We all remember the infamous 2006 Wisconsin Declaration, its poison influence is now spreading even as far as Texas. The ACCG has just posted on its website a facsimile of a letter on US Congress letterhead dated Sept 27th 2010, addressed to Secretary of State Clinton.

This is what it says:

Dear Madam Secretary,
we write today to express concern with certain actions of the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural affairs ("ECA") that appear to undermine the legislative intent of Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act ("CPIA"), 19 U.S.C. Section 2601 et seq. This legislation which was drafted by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, furthers our national interest in promoting cultural access and trade which is central to our nation's values.

Recently, the ECA imposed restrictions on the importation of coins from Cyprus and China that clearly are contrary to the intent of the enabling legislation. In particular, we understand that the past Chairman of the President's Cultural property Advisory Committee stated in a declaration filed in federal court that his committee recommended against import restrictions on coins. However, ECA imposed them anyway. We also understand that Freedom of Information Act requests have confirmed that China never asked for import restrictions on coins, but that ECA provided them to China anyway.

The CPIA, "concerted international response" requirement is meant to ensure the comity and effectiveness of such import restrictions, but the rules on Cypriot and Chinese coins only discriminate against American collectors, and represent a taking of their private property. Foreigners - including collectors in Cyprus and China - continue to import coins without any restrictions. We request that you initiate a review of these two actions, and if it is concluded that the law or any procedures have been broken, that the State Department suspend these restrictions promptly.

We also understand that ECA is considering a renewal of the current MOU with Italy, which expires in January 2011 and possible expansion to include import restrictions on ancient Greek and Roman artefacts for another five years. Rules about import restrictions on cultural artefacts from Italy were first promulgated in 2001 and 2006. As a quid pro quo, Italy promised to increase long term loans to all US museums to facilitate the issuance of export permits for cultural goods legitimately sold within Italy, and to increase Italy's efforts against looters. We further understand that of these requirements, only the last related to Italy's enforcement efforts has been realised.

We hope that before any action is taken on renewing the MOU the State Department conduct a full review of Italian compliance with the current MOU's provisions concerning long term loans and the facilitation of export permits for legally acquired cultural items. Italian non-compliance with the current MOU should not be rewarded as that would only serve to deny Americans' promised cultural opportunities. Even more specifically, there should be no expansion of the MOU to include coins, commonplace items that stand outside the scope of the legislative intent behind CPIA.

We look forward to hearing your actions in support of our above requests to strengthen CPIA
Sincerly.

The 12 Signatories are, to their shame:
Paul Ryan (R-WI), Thomas Petri (R-WI), John Culberson (R-TX), Michael Burgess (R-TX), Sam Johnson (R-TX), Lamar Smith (R-TX), Ciro Rodriguez (D-TX), John Campbell (R-CA), Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO) , Rob Wittman (R-VA), John Spratt (D-SC) and Joe Courtney (D-CT).

Ryan, Petrie and Culberson are recipients of ACCG Friends of Numismatics Awards. The ACCG notes that the lead in the preparation of this text was Ryan, so let's call them the 'Wisconsin 12'.



So it looks like the ACCG are going after Hilary Clinton now. If her Department does not find any law or procedure broken by its staff with regard to the China and Cyprus ancient coin import restrictions, but the Baltimore illegal coin import stunt case says otherwise, then will the ACCG press for her dismissal?

So checking Italy's "compliance", is that not the task of the CPAC?

Now, I really am puzzled by what the Wisconsin12 Congresspeople think is the "legislative intent" of an act called the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act. Surely it is intended to implement the measures laid down in the Convention mentioned in its preamble, in other words the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property. Is that not so?

Now surely the aim of the Convention as its name implies is Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property between and within the territories of the various States Party, and not "furthering US national interest in promoting cultural access and trade" (whether or not making money from such trade is or is not "central to our nation's values"). Certainly the intent of the Convention is the trade in illegally exported cultural property should not become "central" to the national values of any of the States party. It seems to me that in their haste to prove themselves Friends of Numismatics by reducing the scope of the implementation of the 1970 Convention, the Wisconsin Twelve seem to lost sight of some of those key national values.

'Implementing the Convention' means implementing the Convention surely and not implementing a law which says the convention is all very fine but if we actually prohibit and prevent our citizens from being involved in the illicit import and transfer of cultural property certain key national values are going to suffer. I wonder what those key values could be?

The illicit import and transfer of cultural property involves stealing. Is theft from others a key national value of the Wisconsin 12's United States?
The illicit import and transfer of cultural property involves dishonourable trade practices, lies on the customs declaration forms, is dishonesty and dishonour now a key American value?
The illicit import and transfer of cultural property taken from other countries is a deep disregard and disrespect for the rights of the citizens of the countries from which they are illegally removed, since when was disregard and disrespect for others a key US national value?

"Our nation's values", what does the Wisconsin Twelve's letter to Secretary Hilary Clinton say about them? What message is the United States Congress giving out to the rest of the world here? Take a good look everybody at how the US democratic process works, apparently all you have to do is give out a few wall plaques made on the cheap in Turkey to a few congressmen and it seems from this letter that you can get twelve of them in your pocket. Nice.

I wonder to what extent the twelve signatories of this letter are aware that restrictions only apply to coins without documentation of legal export which can be supplied by two types of pieces of paper? There is no restriction on the movement through US borders of coins of the designated categories with the proper paperwork, nor of coins from those countries which do not fall in the designated categories. There is no sign in the letter that the Congressmen were appraised of this. On the contrary, it looks very much like from the wording of what they wrote that they had allowed themselves to be misinformed about the nature of the restrictions.

As for what they write about China, I fail to see why when a nation whose archaeological material includes ancient coins asks for archaeological artefacts to be protected it has to add "and coins". That's like saying legislation about canine vaccination must included the words "and chihuahuas and poodles". Coins ARE artefacts, unless they were made by the coin elves, maybe the Wisconsin12 believe in the coin elves and therefore think looting is quite unrelated to the trade in illegally exported artefacts? Who knows what they think? But I am of the opinion that they should be asked.

The Congress12 claim that American collectors are discriminated against by American laws, note that they fail to mention dealers. Why? Of course it is not just American collectors is it? Mexican coin collectors in the US will also have to comply with US law on this matter. It is of course true that collectors of the source countries have no restriction on "import" of these coins, they come from the soil there. Duh.

How can restricting the import of improperly exported coins "represent a taking of the private property" of collectors ? (Note again dealers are not mentioned.) How can a US citizen own something knowingly acquired in disregard of the relevant laws?

As for the Wisconsin12 saying that their letter is merely an attempt "to strengthen CPIA", they must think Secretary of State Clinton is a nine-year old to fall for that one. They are not only attempting to undermine the CCPIA, but also the intent of the 1970 UNESCO Convention. Look on world, see how these 12 Congressmen value accession to an international Convention.

I do not understand why on the second page bearing the signatures (several of which give the impression have being done using the same pen) there are four empty lines. Were there initially supposed to have been four other Congressmen who had initially agreed to sign but had second thoughts when they realised what was going on? If so, good for them - may we know their names?

The ACCG urges "Ancient coin collectors who are represented in Washington by any of these Members of Congress are encouraged to contact the local or national offices and thank them for their support". There are, I firmly believe, large numbers of people who care for the protection of the world's archaeological record from commercial exploitation by looters to fuel the US no-questions-asked market in ancient coins (V-coins alone today 147 dealers in ancient dugups, 111,096 items, value: 22,341,929 dollars). If any of them are represented in Washington by any of these twelve Members of Congress signatory to this disgraceful letter I'd encourage them to contact the local or national offices and ask them just what they think they are doing. Is that how they represent the DECENT folk of their nation?

Photos of the Friends of Numismatics receiving tinny ACCG wall plaques from the ACCG website.

Woman arrested while attempting to mail a mummy by parcel post

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According to a report ('Woman arrested while attempting to mail a mummy by parcel post') Bolivian police arrested a woman who had tried to send a Peruvian mummy in a cardboard box to France using regular postal service. The child's corpse, probably from a burial of the Inca culture,

was discovered during a routine inspection at the time it was being shipped through the Post Office of Bolivia in La Paz bound for the French town of Compiegne addressed to a person identified as Annette Huc, said Tuesday police Col. Adolfo Cárdenas, according to El Comercio de Lima (in Spanish).
Cardenas said the detainee stated that she received the parcel containing the mummy from a Peruvian national in the Bolivian town of Desaguadero, near the border with Peru, about 70 kilometres west of La Paz. The instructions she received were to send the shipment to France by Parcel Post. She also stated being unaware of the content of the package, reports lostiempos.com of Cochabamba, Bolivia (in Spanish).

There are two points here, it is no problem at all to shove whatever illicit antiquity in a box with bubble wrap and send it through the post with some vague customs declaration hoping the package will not be opened. It probably happens all the time. Secondly what kind of perverted "ancient art" collector collects dessicated human corpses ? It seems some people have absolutely no scruples about what they will collect and put on display in their homes to "make an impression" (or whatever they use these artefacts for - I would like to see Annette Huc whoever justify this on the grounds that they are "studying the past" through gaping ghoulishly at this cadaver). The case is still being investigated. Let us hope those responsible for trafficking human remains at both ends of the chain are brought to justice.

Munich Coin Dealers and the Bavarian Minister Lecture the US Govermnment

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Martin Zeil the Bavarian Minister of Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology sent an official letter to the US State Department declaring Bavaria's opposition (sic) to inclusion of coins in any cultural property MOU the US Government might consider signing with the government of Greece (reference V/1 - 6715/24/1 16.09.2010). What an extraordinary document! The Minister informs the State Department that he opposes the United States government signing any kind of agreement with Greece about the import of illegally exported antiquities from Greece, because:

The proposed restrictions (along for similar ones being considered for Italy) would negatively impact the legitimate numismatic trade between Germany and the United States of America and also people to people contacts between US and German citizens.

The letter was apparently written at the instigation of Dr. Hubert ("cash is beautiful") Lanz, President of The Federation of European Professional Numismatic Associations. The Minister explains that in Germany

there are around 100 auction houses, more than 500 retailers and estimated more than a half million collectors of old coins. Moreover, a considerable number of them are located in Munich, and are engaged in trade with customers the United States.

Let us note: upwards of six hundred coin dealers making lots of money from selling ancient coins, many of them based in Munich. But let us note the implications of this estimate of five hundred thousand collectors, which presumably comes from Dr Lanz. Germany has a population of 82 million, this means that one in 164 is a collector of old coins. The US has a population only four times that - some 310 million - and only 50 000 collectors of ancient coins (one in 6200). So if the supply of illegally exported ancient coins to America is a concern, what about the size of that German market? Minister Ziel then goes on disingenuously to admit:

apart from very few exceptions, no licence or permit is needed in Germany, neither for import to Germany nor for export from Germany of coins. If the import of certain coins into the United States required an export licence granted by authorities of the export country in future, this requirement could not be fulfilled by German retailers. Legal trade would then hardly be possible between Germany and the United States.

Look at that, no paperwork at all involved. The epitome of no-questions-asked antiquity dealing. So basically if you are a Greek looter and have a bucketload of 'hot' coins on your hands, obviously the legislative framework of Mr Zeil's state invites you to stick them in the post or hop on a train and go and see the Münchener Münzmafia. No licences needed for legal trade in Bavaria Minister Zeil says, and what German collectors don't snap up can go straight to the US market without more ado. What a coin looter's paradise Bavaria must be, Mr Zeile must be so proud of his homeland's part in free trade in the world's "liberated" portable antiquities, rivalling the position of Wisconsin. So basically what is the fuss across the Atlantic about the MOU for anyway? Probably most ancient coins illegally exported from Greece coming to the US are not coming from Greek destinations at all, but through Munich ("Moreover, a considerable number of them are located in Munich, and are engaged in trade with customers the United States", I bet).

Mr Zeil, did you fully understand the implications of the letter you signed? Were you made aware of the clause in the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act concerning the alternative to an export licence which applies to goods legitimately on markets outside Greece before the date of the implementation of the Act (CCPIA s. 307[b] [2])?


Vignette: München Kleines Stadtwappen, the Münchner Kindl: a Munchkin lecturing the US Government. What further entertainments will the coineys come up with next? Bottom: Martin Zeile, supporter of Munich's lucrative antiquities market.
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Urgent Request from CNG: Help to Keep the Flow of Illegally Exported Artefacts From Greece Unrestrained by US Law

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Five False Arguments in the service of the dugup coin trade:

The Staff at coin dealer CNG, Inc. with offices in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and London, England is sending out an "Urgent Request from CNG" by email to all (?) its clients. This document asks for their help "to oppose any new restrictions on the trade of coins" resulting from the Greek government's request to the US to curb imports of ancient artefacts illegally exported from Greece by application of the measures allowed by the 1983 Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (CCPIA). They are asking their clients to help by making their "thoughts known to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC), which will soon evaluate the Greek request". This matter is important because:

In the past, coins [illegally exported - PMB] from Greece have not been subject to restrictions of this type. If this new request is granted, the impact on both collectors and dealers could be substantial. Please see our instructions below to send CPAC your comments.

In case the poor dears cannot work it out for themselves The CNG instruct ancient dugup coin collectors how to do this and then give them some thoughts to express on their behalf:

Industry attorney Peter Tompa has suggested that collectors consider the following points:

(1) US law requires that restrictions only be applied on artifacts "first discovered in Greece." But hoard evidence demonstrates that Greek coins circulated extensively outside the confines of the modern Greek nation state.
(2) US law requires restrictions only be placed on artifacts of "cultural significance." But coins -- which exist in many multiples-- do not meet that particular criteria.
(3) US law requires that less drastic remedies be tried before import restrictions. But Greece has not tried systems akin the the UK Treasure Act before seeking restrictions.
(4) US law requires that restrictions be consistent with the interests of the international community in cultural exchanges. But restrictions will diminish the ability of American collectors to appreciate Greek culture and could greatly limit people to people contacts with other collectors in Europe.
(5) Restrictions are unfair and discriminatory to Americans. Collectors in the EU--including Greece-- have no similar limitations on their ability to import ancient coins.

[numbering of bullet points is mine PMB].

This is taken directly from a text posted a few hours earlier on Tompa's blog: Calling All Coin Collectors [Again]

What an extraordinary text. I am glad Mr Tompa is not my lawyer, though it is gratifying that he's the dugup coin industry's. Let us analyse these five interpretations of the CCPIA starting with the last.

Collectors in the EU in states which have signed or ratified the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property have of course the same rights to buy illegally exported ancient artefacts as US collectors should an MOU be signed. None. Article 8 of that convention is one that is rarely discussed in the US, and it would be worth collectors looking at it and pondering what it means. It means that all nations signatory to that Convention have a right to expect that all states party to it will respect that to the same measure. The United States is a state party to that but by means of its 1983 cop-out law (CPIA) announces that instead of accepting Art 8, it will apply another additional criterion. So far illegally exported coins from nations (like Greece) who are not on the State Department's list of "special cultural property friends of the US" pass effortlessly both ways through the barrier of bubbles that US customs comprises for all types of dugup and other cultural property. It is the US here who having signed the 1970 Convention is being discriminatory.

Let us look at Tompa's second "point". According to him, the CCPIA "requires restrictions only be placed on artifacts of "cultural significance" and says this does not apply to coins. He is referring it would seem to the Act's Section 302 [definitions] (2). Take a look at it, it is really badly composed (as I say, it is a cop-out law). Nevertheless the term "archaeological material of the State Party" in the understanding of the CCPIA means (A and C) any object or part of object "of archaeological interest". Then there is the bit which Tompa is so interested in: "For purposes of this paragraph" (by which is meant paragraph 2 which is by no means clear from the way this document is published on the State Department website) "[...] no object may be considered to be an object of archaeological interest unless such object (I) is of cultural significance; (II) is at least two hundred and fifty years old; and (III) was normally discovered as a result of scientific excavation, clandestine or accidental digging, or exploration on land or under water".

So the Greek request covers artefacts up to the mid eighteenth century ("at least 250 years" old see the transparent and deceptive attempt by an ACCG officer to provoke collectors by claiming that the measures will affect nineteenth century coins) and ancient Greek coins certainly are "normally discovered as a result of scientific excavation, clandestine or accidental digging, or exploration on land or under water". But Tompa (who collects coins) says that ancient coins are "not of cultural significance". This is rich coming from a group of people who use "numismatics" as a "window to the past" as one of them puts it, who claim that by collecting them they are learning about past cultures, even adding to our knowledge of ancient cultures. That they have a right to access this culture. Ancient coins are a product of ancient cultures, they bear all sorts of culturally coded information on them (the basis of the ACCG's revised claim in the Baltimore Illegal Coin Import Stunt - apparently written by Tompa's law firm). The coineys cannot have it both ways, either coins are "not objects of cultural significance", or they are - which is the justification for collecting them. (Mr Tompa's numismocentric blog of course is called "Cultural Property Observer")

The first of Tompa's points is really odd. He says that the CPIA "requires that restrictions only be applied on artifacts "first discovered in Greece"...". Although the garbled construction of the 1983 US cultural property cop-out law does not facilitate exegesis, by my reading this is by no means the case. Look at Section 302 [definitions] (2) The term "archaeological [....] material of the State Party" means [....]; or (C) any fragment or part of any object referred to in subparagraph (A) or (B); which was first discovered within, and is subject to export control by, the State Party". Any object or part of object. The "first discovered in" clause preceded by "or" however clearly applies to the class "any fragment or part of any object" and not to the objects "referred to in subparagraph (A) or (B)". What this seems to be referring to is a situation where looted stuff is taken out of a country, broken up and then sold off as individual pieces piecemeal, like for example mosaics ripped off Cypriot church walls and sold as "panels" by European dealers (the famous Kanakaria mosaic case came to light after the CCPIA was enacted). This is because it could be argued that, by dismemberment the objects become different objects from the ones that were illegally exported.

Nevertheless divigations on this are totally beside the point. It is clear that what is being discussed is how US customs are to react to packages coming from Greece containing ancient artefacts. For the duration of any eventual MOU, they are to look more carefully at the paperwork than they otherwise do. That is all, importers and exporters of ancient artefacts from Greece must make sure their papers are in order, that is all. Is that so difficult? For many dealers in the legitimate art and antiques market, even in the US, this is second nature. These measures are intended to help fight illegal exports of ancient artefacts from Greece, rather than control the flow of ancient material of Greek origin globally. The latter depiction of what source nations are proposing is a fallacy fostered by the dealers' lobby (the material produced by the ACCG being a particularly egregious example) and swallowed by the more gullible and easily roused among collectors who apparently are incapable of thinking these things out for themselves.

Tompa's thought Number Four was that the CCPIA requires that measures adopted by the President be consistent with the interests of the international community in cultural exchanges. Tompa argues that restrictions on coins illegally exported from Greece [which is what the Greek request concerns]: "will diminish the ability of American collectors to appreciate Greek culture" and furthermore "could greatly limit people to people contacts with other collectors in Europe". Well, let us recall the name of the Convention the CCPIA partially "implements" ( Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property). I wonder just what sort of 'people-to-people contacts' are involved in the illicit movement of saleable artefacts around and out of Europe. Perhaps they are precisely the type that the US and its voracious no-questions-asked market for antiquities should not be encouraging. The prevention of the import of illegally exported dugup cultural property will not probably unduly affect the ability of 300 million American citizens "to appreciate Greek culture". I think many of them would anyway be appalled if they knew the extent of the problem being caused by US dealers and private collectors. Many of them can gain an appreciation of the culture through its literature, drama, the licitly exported artefacts available in museums, those art books, multimedia or other representations and indeed travel to Greece. Anyway, I thought Tompa was arguing that ancient coins are NOT objects of cultural significance, so if so, how can they in any significant way contribute to the "appreciation" of Greek culture? [By the way, to "appreciate ancient Greek culture", many collectors collect stamps, phonecards and banknotes depicting ancient Greek themes, there are a lot of them, and their collection does no damage to the archaeological heritage - but I would expect the ACCG coineys to claim they are in some way superior to those non-erosive other collectors].

Then we come to the funniest of the five. Tompa's third point is that collectors should be instructing the CPAC that the CCPIA "requires that less drastic remedies be tried before import restrictions. But Greece has not tried systems akin the the UK Treasure Act before seeking restrictions". Wow. This refers to Section 303 [3] [implementation of Article 9 of the Convention] (a) [Agreement Authority] (1) [4], (C) (i). In brief this means that the President can apply the measures defined by the CCPIA if he decides that there is a looting problem ("the cultural patrimony of the State Party is in jeopardy" - unqualified) in the requesting state party, that the requesting state (duh) is itself undertaking measures outlined by the Convention (only) to counter the problem and curbing imports of illegally exported material by the US would help but only after determining that "(ii) remedies less drastic than the application of the restrictions set forth in such section are not available". Taken in context of Section 303 it can be seen that this has absolutely NOTHING to do with "systems akin to the UK Treasure Act" in Greece since the measures the President considers applying instead are domestic, US ones to deal with the problem which would be less drastic than applying import restrictions. (Note this clause is part of subparagraph C and not subparagraph B of Section 303 (a) (1).)

By the way, collectors might like to look at article 8 of the 2002 Greek antiquities legislation and consider just where the difference is between that and the United Kingdom's 1996 Treasure Act. I do not see any, but then I guess the problem is that collectors who follow the ACCG's Pied Piper simply have not looked.

This discussion of the CNG "Appeal" seems well to deserve my "collectors being led by the nose" vignette, I think. Let us keep an eye on the public comments and see how many of them have been able to work this out for themselves, and how many are firing off protests which simply echo what they have been told to say by the ACCG and the commercial arm, the CNG.

Oh, and before you go, just do please take a look at this post about the CNG's last appeal for help - see any similarities?

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Customs: What Else Gets Through Their "Scrutiny"?

A while ago five ancient metal vessels apparently clandestinely entered the European Union from Turkey wrapped in a carpet. The Customs officers who should be guarding our borders did not notice, and the objects are now in Germany and subject to dispute. Looking at the five of them, it seems to me that there is at least a kilogramme of metal there, and together they'd be quite a bulky package in the middle of a carpet. But still the Customs officers did not notice. What else do they not see?

A kilogramme of antiquities means a lot of destruction of archaeology. Possibly no big deal to many people (collectors and dealers included).
A kilogramme of icons stolen from Cypriot churches in the Turkish zone is equally possibly no big deal to many people (collectors and dealers included). Would they be stopped by the same customs officers that did not find five bowls in a carpet?
A kilogramme of blood diamonds however can do a lot more damage, would they be stopped by the same customs officers?
A kilogramme of plastic explosives destined for some terrorist group can do a lot more damage, would they be stopped by the same customs officers?
A kilogramme of plutonium waste is enough for a dirty bomb that could, for example, devastate Hamburg in response to the closing of a 'radical' mosque, would they be stopped by the same customs officers?
A kilogramme of anthrax spores smuggled out of Iraq (remember those "weapons of mass destruction" and Colin Powell's show?) could contaminate more than just Hamburg, would they be stopped by the same customs officers?
A kilogramme of CDs with kiddie porn picture files represents a lot of child abuse and a lot of profit for somebody, would they be stopped by the same customs officers?
A kilogramme of jihadist literature passing to militant groups in Germany through Moslem Turkey could in the long run be very damaging. Would that be stopped by the same customs officers?
A kilogramme of poached ivory or rhino horn means the death of a number of individuals of endangered species, would that be stopped by the same customs officers?
And so on.

The constant ability of the international antiquities market to get illicit antiquities and other stolen artworks across national and international borders (enough to support a multi-million dollar industry it is believed) with very few cases where such traffic is actually detected at the borders, should be raising very real public fears about what else is getting through undetected. In reality you do not need anything like a kilogramme of anthrax spores or plutonium to create a threat to public safety. It seems to me, that despite all the controls we have and the technology that could be brought to bear on the problem, we are woefully unprotected against international movement of all sorts of nasty stuff. Instead of loosening the controls at the borders, as would very much suit the no-questions-asked antiquities market, surely there are a number of very good reasons why in this day and age, we should be tightening them. Just as the amount of antiquities which are, probably daily, getting through undetected are a visible sign of this, so too tightening border controls would cut down the number of illeally exported antiquities and other cultural property that are travelling across international borders.

Bernd Gackstätter and "His" Disputed Bowls

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David Gill has joined the discussion of the "Frankfurt Bowls" case which has been in the antiquity collecting news (mostly due to the rather unorthodox, one might even say emotional, phrasing of a Frankfurt judge in his summing up, rather than the implications of the verdict itself). On Looting Matters he discusses how the disputed items came onto the market. On the basis of the existing accounts he notes: "It appears that the Phrygian bowls were removed from Turkey without a permit, wrapped in a carpet". In that case, David makes an observation and asks a very pertinent question which I would like to quote. The bowls are apparently the property of "den Frankfurter Antikenhändler Bernd Gackstätter" who:

"is a member of the IADAA. IADAA members are bound by an ethical code (German):The members of IADAA undertake not to purchase or sell objects until they have established to the best of their ability that such objects were not stolen from excavations, architectural monuments, public institutions or private property.

Die Mitglieder der IADAA verpflichten sich, Objekte erst zu erwerben oder zu verkaufen, wenn sie nach bestem Wissen und Gewissen sichergestellt haben, dass die Objekte nicht aus Ausgrabungsstätten, von Denkmälern der Architektur, aus öffentlichen Institutionen oder dem privaten Eigentümer gestohlen wurden. "

So has Bernd Gackstätter established ("to the best of their ability") that the phialai "were not stolen from excavations" (or indeed any unrecorded archaeological site)? Note that the IADAA expects its members to aspire to an ethical standard.

In their press release (which David Gill quotes) it is clear that the IADAA is aware of the facts of this case and as Gill suggests is "trying to present a story in their favour" (like actually missing out from their English translation the bottom half of the original document being quoted with the - revealing - nitty gritty of the verdict Cf: here with here), and that there is the world of difference between what is merely legal in the antiquities trade and what is ethical. Gill also notes evidence that suggests in other cases action has been taken by the IADAA against other members who transgressed the Code of Ethics. He concludes:

I hope IADAA members who value their ethical code will be urging Bernd Gackstätter to return the Phrygian phialai to Turkey without any further adverse publicity for their organisation.

It remains to be seen whether the IADAA code of ethics is actually worth more than the paper it is written on.

By the way, we should not lose sight of the fact that the disputed items also include two Byzantine metal vessels too, but the Phrygian omphalos bowls are perhaps more photogenic.

Vignette: the omphalos schlossen at the centre of the row (Frankfurter Rundschau).