SLAM Bumper Sticker

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The  Malibu office of the Association for Museum Professional Excellence  (AMPE) has brought out a bumper sticker to publicise the damaging effects of museums retaining artefacts which they know are of dodgy provenance.

The St Louis city fathers evidently see it as a source of pride to exhibit stolen objects in their art museum. This ignores the feelings of good decent folk having the stigma attached to admitting that they are a citizen of such a place. This campaign will hopefully lead to the Museum Trustees becoming more aware of the damage they are doing to the image of their city by refusing for so long to do the right thing. In the coming weeks, these bumper stickers will be available from a AMPE office near you, except in St Louis of course (SLAM does not belong to the AMPE).

Panic in the Ranks - They Should Read my Blog....

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Coineys are in general slow thinkers, it takes them ages to churn over some ideas, which is why the dealers can lead them by the nose so easily. The latter have just woken up to the EU public consultation on "Council Directive 93/7/EEC on the return of cultural objects unlawfully removed from the territory of a Member State" reported here last year. It seems their Cultural Property Observer has not been all that "observant" after all. So it is that "Coin Weekly" has issued an emergency "special edition" getting the news out to all those poorly-informed US coineys who thought there were "no restrictions on the movement of cultural property in the EU" - to inform them that there are (otherwise how can items be "unlawfully removed" from them?), and the conditions under which the problem is dealt with might be about to change. The title is incomprehensible ("Public consultation – privately") no less so than the text, obviously written in haste [actually it is a translation of the Münzenwoche.de article "Öffentliche Konsultation im Geheimen"]

March 5, 2012 – The European Union is conducting a public consultation largely unknown whether the directives on the return of cultural property need restrictions. Please join absolutely in this consultation today. Even the associations concerned came to know of this consultation only on Friday March 2, 2012. Hence we are all under pressure of time. Please join absolutely in this consultation today. The deadline expires today, March 5, 2012.

Garble-garble-coineyspeak. It looks like a computer translation. At least this shows there is not much difference between the worst of German coineyism and the worst of USA coineyism:

Sollte die Europäische Union ihrer Meinung nach den EU-Ländern helfen, ihre Kulturgüter zu schützen? – Was für eine doppeldeutige Frage! Effektiver Schutz vor Ort wäre nötig, aber in die inneren Verhältnisse der Länder mischt sich die EU selbstverständlich nicht ein. Oder hätten Sie von einem Hilfsangebot gehört, das Italien zeigt, wie man den Einsturz von wertvoller Gebäudesubstanz verhindert, oder Griechenland die finanziellen Mittel gibt, seine Museen und Grabungsstätten zu bewachen? Die Frage dreht sich nur um eine verschärfte Gesetzgebung auf Kosten von Sammlern und Händlern. Und dann das Herkunftszertifikat, das es nicht gibt! Allein diese Frage zeigt, aus welcher Richtung der Fragebogen kommt.
[...] Und hier die zweite doppeldeutige Frage: eine Gesetzgebung, die der Willkür für Beschlagnahmungen Tür und Tor öffnet, ist schlecht. Doch bis jetzt haben die Gerichte anhand eben dieser Gesetzgebung noch immer die Beweislast dem Ankläger aufgebürdet. Deshalb sind diese Gesetze „insgesamt geeignet“. Kein Sammler, kein Händler, kein Museum kann eine verschärfte Gesetzgebung wünschen, die dem Besitzer der Münze die Beweislast aufbürdet, dass seine Münze aus einer alten Sammlung stammt. [...] Sie haben nur noch heute Zeit, ihre Meinung bei dieser Umfrage zum Ausdruck zu bringen. Nutzen Sie diese Möglichkeit!

Well, fine, but perhaps they should familiarise themselves with the subject of the directive "Council Directive 93/7/EEC on the return of cultural objects unlawfully removed from the territory of a Member State". How many collectors will that affect? How many of them willingly collect items unlawfully removed from the territory of an EU state and will go on paper defending their "rights" to do so? Nutzen Sie diese Möglichkeit!

And by now all those US collectors rushing to defend their "rights" before the deadline to collect unlawfully exported material from EU countries will have found that the consultation is only available to EU citizens, not looter/smuggler/culture criminal-financers from outside the EU.

It seems to me that for a fuller picture coineys really do need to read my blog rather than sticking to the misleading one-sided pap coin dealers offer them on the coiney forums and blogs. Nutzen Sie diese Möglichkeit!

The Olympia Theft: Organized Crime and International Antiquities Trafficking

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As can be expected, attention has been drawn to the involvement of outsiders in the theft of Greek heritage in the media. One text (Fani Toli/ Ingka Athanasiadou, 'Cases of Illicit Antiquities Trade and Stolen Artifacts in Greece',Greekreporter.com, February 19, 2012) puts the case of Friday's armed robbery at the Museum of Ancient Olympia in the context of several recent antiquity busts which show it is foreigners behind the majority of them. The authors add one piece of information to that previously released which rather supports my own suggestion that the theft was the work of members of an organized criminal group:

People investigating the case of the armed robbery at the Museum of Ancient Olympia say that the 65 stolen artifacts have possibly crossed Greek borders.
According to police sources, the case of Ancient Olympia was a made-to-order theft, because the thieves, after having stolen the 65 artifacts, were trying to find another two exhibits that were not being shown.

The article goes on to point out the degree to which in cases of antiquities thefts in Greece the stolen artefacts end up in international galleries or in private galleries abroad. This does not just affect antiquities, the country’s ecclesiastical heritage has been dealt a heavy blow as well.

In the past, Scotland Yard identified the alleged mastermind behind a ring that had been stealing religious icons from churches and monasteries in Epirus and Thessaly which subsequently ended up at European auction houses. The information that led to the ring leader’s identification was provided by a London gallery following the online identification of six Byzantine icons that the gallery was planning to sell. Besides the aforementioned relics, the London gallery has also handed over another 10 icons to the Greek Embassy in the British capital which have also been identified through photographs as having been stolen from monasteries in Epirus and Western Macedonia.

The article mentions the case of the
'Kouri of Tenea’ illegally excavated from an archaeological site in the Klenies district of southern Corinth prefecture, the looters had demanded 10 million euros for the statues. They were arrested in May 2010.
The article's authors also mention "the largest ever discovery of illegal antiquities", found by Greek police on April 13 2006 at a villa on the tiny Aegean island of Schinoussa, south of Naxos.

According to archaeologists inventorying the collection, it contained 280 items dating to many periods and from around the Mediterranean, some hidden and some openly used as decorations. A 30-metre-square chapel had been built on the six-acre site, constructed of ancient architectural fragments from various eras. Other items were a headless Roman statue of Aphrodite, a carved marble sarcophagus, three marble busts and two granite sphinxes. The villa belonged to Dimitra Papadimitriou of the wealthy shipping family, but was reported to had been owned previously by London dealer Robin Symes and his business partner, the late Christos Michailidis, Papadimitriou’s brother.[...] seals and packaging found on the island showed signs of commercial trafficking. Documentation found during the raid also indicated that many of the items had been purchased at Sotheby’s or Christie’s between 2001 and 2005, although none had been declared on entry into Greece.

It will not escape notice that it is precisely at this moment when the Greek archaeological heritage is so vulnerable that over in the US dealers in dugup antiquities are calling for a suspension of the implementation by the US of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Prevention of the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property,as if getting ready for the onset of a new wave of illicit import, export and transfer of ownership into their hands of Greek cultural property. Do such antiquities traders have any scruples at all about what they do?

Ethics in the Antiquities Trade, "Nazi" Cloud Cuckoo Land?

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Pointing out that a useful code of ethics for coin collectors could contain elements that confront the issue of the presence of illicit coins on the market instead of weasel-wording around the issue, I was accused by one dealer of living in "Cloud Cuckoo Land". He deliberately used the German term and he received the Godwinian reward he was looking for; summoning up all the intellect one might expect from the US dugup coin-collecting community, on one of Welsh's discussion lists, ebay coin dealer "Tim3rexes" retorts:

Wolkenkuckucksheim land? I've always pictured Barford as imagining that he lived in Berlin in 1938 or 1939 and that he was a valued member of the party.

So now ethical trade in coins is linked with the Nazi Party. What new surprises can the coiney intellect come up with on this issue?

Vignette: Google search has a lot on a person calling himself "Tim3rexes", 50 years old from Georgia. Is this the guy who fantasises about Nazis on coiney discussion lists? If so, he'd probably prefer me not to say where I found the photo. Dangerous place the Internet, you meet all kinds.

Ethical US Coineys Only to be Found in Cloud Cuckoo Land?

Münzhändler David von Welsch has - by his own account a vast stock over in California of "many thousands of uncatalogued coins". He says however that anyone looking for ethical behaviour among those handling dugup coins in the US is inhabiting the 'Νεφελοκοκκυγία' (Cloud Cuckoo Land) of Aristophanes, except for some reason he said it in German.

Well, I am glad he said it and not me. He apparently thinks that the unreasonableness of expecting real ethics involved should be clear "to anyone who is genuinely capable of critical and discriminating thinking, who really desires to comprehend the very complex issues we are discussing". Actually the issue is not all that complex, in the case we were discussing (Mr Snible's exported coin), the lack of an export licence makes the transaction illicit in the understanding of the 1970 UNESCO Convention Art. 3, how can any real code of ethics, or body of personal principles, ignore that simple black and white fact? The only "complexities" get introduced by the ruffians who WANT to ignore that and create some kind of a pseudo-discussion about what makes them, individually and collectively, in some way above all that. The rest of us are left wondering what is complex there at all, and who is actually trying to live in another world, operating to other rules which only apply to "the other guys"?

UPDATE 17.11.2011: Welsh dishonestly attempts a sleight-of-hand deflection of attention from what he actually said to another issue, now in a text which is both insulting and misleading he says that ancient coins should not concern archaeologists because they were not all buried (or something, the logic escapes me). I leave it to others to discuss the relevance - or not - of his cock-and-bull stories about gold coins in Ottoman coffers and "purses" hidden by soldiers before a battle. What was being discussed here was export licences and codes of ethics, and it is to that which Welsh clearly referred when he accused me and those who share my viewpoint on the no-questions-asked antiquities trade of living in "Cloud Cuckoo Land".

Bonham's Sale: Sawn Off Sarcophagus

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Another item in Bonham's New Bond Street Sale 18947 - Antiquities, 5 Oct 2011 caught my eye:

Lot No: 41 An Egyptian wood sarcophagus panel, Graeco-Roman Period, circa 332 B.C.-323 A.D.
[...] 28¾in (73cm) high [...]: Provenance: Dr. W. Schirmer Collection, Germany, formed between the 1950s and 1960s.

"Please note that condition is not stated in the catalogue" it says. I guess not, otherwise they have to explain how the top and bottom "happened" to get sawn off to make this into a 73cm long (suitcase size) display piece. While it looks like the gesso at the foot end had flaked off in the tomb, that of the collar looks to have been intact, so one wonders where the head and shoulders ended up. I wondered whether referring to it as a 'sarcophagus' rather than 'mummy case' might be to excuse why it was chunky and rectangular, but it seems to be house style.

Vignette: artefact procurer's equipment, a saw for reducing bulky objects to more portable size.

True to Be Awarded by Association for Research into Crimes against Art? Why?

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In a rather odd post on his Illicit Cultural Property Blog Derek Fincham disseminates an unpublished letter he wrote together with Noah Charney of ARCA to the editors of The New York Review of Books about Hugh Eakin's review (“What Went Wrong at the Getty” July 13, 2011) of Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museums. It's rather a long letter which seems rather to be mostly a vehicle to get a mention ARCA into the papers, but the central point is a defence of curator Marion True.

When one compares the number of returned objects acquired under the direction of Philippe de Montebello at the Met, one should perhaps wonder why he received accolades and a grand retirement while Dr. True was made an example of.

They point out that "an array of prominent officials at the Getty were lured into buying looted art by three renowned leaders of large-scale organized looting rings, Robert Hecht, Giacomo Medici and Gianfranco Becchina, who are truly to blame [...] while Dr. True is no saint, she does not represent the core of the problem". So a collector who knowingly buys the stolen Van Gogh painting from Cairo's Mahmoud Khalil Museum because they were lured into it by an attractive offer is not the core of the problem? It is because there ARE people who can't say 'no' and will buy without bothering whether the transaction is legitimate or not that these things get stolen. The collector who buys dodgy stuff is as guilty as the seller to whom he gives money for selling dodgy stuff. Fincham and Charney argue further on True's behalf:

Dr. True has tried to preach against other curators and museums making the mistake of violating heritage laws. The cynic would say that her only regret was having been caught, but there seems to be a genuine passion in her call for resisting the temptation of a beautiful but looted object, and working to end the purchase by museums of illicit antiquities. Indeed, few have spoken out against the perpetuation of the illicit trade in antiquities with greater fervor.

That's a bit like those US public figures who speak out vehemently against other people's homosexuality and then are caught out taking male escorts on holiday with them etc. They then make an even more controversial suggestion, for "playing a part in setting in motion a sea-change in the way in which museums acquire antiquities" they say Marion True should be applauded:

and perhaps even put before the ARCA Trustees and Board of Editors of the Journal of Art Crime for an annual award to recognize the good work she did, even while she found herself unable to resist the pressure to acquire some beautiful but looted objects.

Well, it's worse than that, she has actually been advanced for an ARCA award (Journal of Art Crime 5 (2011) p. 97), but Renfrew got it instead. I am left wondering whether anything done by Marion True herself actually led to the capture and conviction of a single looter of archaeological sites, or advanced any "Research into Crimes against Art" (of course in looting archaeological sites, its not the "art" that is damaged, just the rest). The Ancient Coin Collectors Guild also speaks out very strongly against looting and bad practice. Maybe Fincham and Charney consider they should get an ARCA award too? Or perhaps Hicham Aboutaam and his brother in recognition of their role in getting the Entemena statue back to Iraq, they too are frequently quoted in papers speaking out against the illicit trade and stressing the need for well-documented transactions. After all they have other awards, so why not an ARCA one? The following year no doubt they will be presenting one to Frederick Schultz and Jonathan Tokeley-Parry for highlighting the importance of provenance...

I've got a better idea, let the "Association for Research into Crimes against Art" stick with the paintings and leave giving awards for financing and turning a blind eye to archaeological looting up to somebody else.

UPDATE 21/8/2011:
Dues where dues are due: Derek Fincham reminds us that in 1988 it was Marion True who led to a dealer with some dodgy looted mosaics being caught: Did Marion True Ever Catch a Looter or Dealer? That's very nice, glad to hear it. We all know there are many dealers and museum people, even if they realised they were being offered dodgy goods would refuse to buy it, but not go that extra step and pick up the phone, so good for her on that occasion. Of course if ARCA feels that is enough to give her their award, that is their prerogative, it's their award.



Vignette: ARCA logo

Export Licences: Stiff Upper Lip and the Cry-Babies

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In the post below I remark on how complex the interaction between UK and EU law on the export of antiquities can become once you start delving into it. An inordinate number of posts on this blog deals with the antics of US dealers about the relatively simple requirements of their powder-puff CCPIA. In the case of certain countries they need a piece of paper for any coins they want to bring in (they have the choice of two different kinds). They do not even have to contend with export licences, the US does not have them, or any institution to issue one (that is despite being a state party of the 1970 UNESCO Convention which requires both). For a number of years these dealers have been digging in their heels, kicking up a ruckus and getting quite hysterical and political about it. Thousands of collectors have willingly allowed themselves to be roped into the action by their widespread publicity (propaganda) campaign and alarmist lies.

I was just wondering, has anyone seen even a hint of something similar in the United Kingdom by antiquity dealers faced with considerably more complex import/export legislation for antiquities? Are they claiming that their small businesses are threatened? Are they alarming that these laws will be the end of collecting? Are they continually whingeing that everybody is against them, and the world does not understand? Or writing blogs like those of the ACCG attacking anyone in a white hat? Well, no - they are not. Despite the paperwork, law-abiding UK dealers they are quietly and, we trust, professionally getting on with doing what they do. And the ones that don't want to abide by the law are not shouting their mouths off about it.

Moans one of the US coineys:

Why has the State Department disadvantaged the interests of American collectors and the small businesses of the numismatic trade by imposing hard to meet documentation requirements (sic) when the support for such restrictions is so limited?

Because they think no-questions-asked collectors and dealers are hateful moaning parasites who do nothing for the credibility of America? I'd say that's probably about it. US dealers are no more "disadvantaged" and (in the case of legal activity) the documentation requirements no "harder to meet" than anyone else who has to provide documentation of legal export or fulfilling US import restrictions on cars, ipods, DVDs, fruit, exotic animals and a whole host of other products. Why cannot US coin dealers just get on with the job, acting within the law and like professionals and quit moaning?

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Egyptian Antiquities Allegedly Smuggled From Dubai to US

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"This office will continue to vigorously enforce cultural property laws that restrict the unauthorized movement of antiquities, Antiquities dealers and collectors are on notice that the smuggling of cultural patrimony will not be tolerated." U.S. Attorney Loretta E. Lynch

Four people have reportedly been charged by US authorities today with illegally trafficking in Egyptian and Greco-Roman antiquities (as well as money laundering). The antiquities concerned were allegedly smuggled past US Customs and Border Protection officers including a Greco-Roman style Egyptian sarcophagus, a unique three-part coffin set belonging to Shesepamuntayesher from the Saite period (26th Dynasty, c. 664-552 B.C.) as well as Egyptian funerary boats and limestone figurines. In addition to Egyptian antiquities, other Middle Eastern and Asian artifacts along with more than a thousand antique coins have been recovered. They were exported from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in a scheme that spanned from October 2008 to November 2009 and packed to avoid official scrutiny at American ports, officials said. US customs law allows for less stringent inspection standards for goods valued at under $2,000. Although the artifacts were worth more than that, the consigners lied to customs officials about their origin and value. They were mislabelled as “antiques", "wood panels” or as a “wooden painted box”. A middle sarcophagus and part of an outer sarcophagus arrived on board a cargo ship at Port Newark in 2009 where they were seized by law enforcement agents, officials said. A civil complaint seeking forfeiture of Egyptian sarcophagi, Iraqi artifacts, cash, and other items seized in connection with the government's investigation was also unsealed this morning in Brooklyn federal court.

Unusually for cases of this nature, the four people charged by Brooklyn federal prosecutors with conspiring to smuggle antiquities into the US have been named. Several sources state that the allegations concern:

Mousa Khouli, Salem Alshdaifat, Joseph A. Lewis, II and Ayman Ramadan

Mousa "Morris" Khouli, 37, is the owner of Windsor Antiquities (website currently offline?) on E. 56th St. in New York. The gallery specializes in Etruscan, Roman, Egyptian and Near Eastern antiquities and ancient coins dating back to 1000 B.C. This dealer features on the recommended dealers list disseminated through Tim Haines' Yahoo "Ancient Artifacts" discussion group - recommended for what though? Readers of this blog might recall the dealer selling one of the "Wenneb" shabtis I was discussing a while back, that story potentially takes on a new significance now, especially as one of the other defendants in this case was also selling them at the same time.

Agents recovered a sarcophagus in Khouli's Brooklyn home, which he falsely claimed was part of his father's collection and "that he had owned it for a long time," court papers state. Federal prosecutors say Khouli purchased that coffin from Ramadan in 2009 and are seeking the forfeiture of all the items so they can be returned to Egypt.

Khouli, 37 will be arraigned Thursday before Magistrate Judge Andrew Carter in Brooklyn federal courthouse. The case is U.S. v. Khouli, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, no. 11-340. (For the U.S.: Assistant U.S. attorneys Karin Orenstein and Claire Kedeshian. For Khouli: Gerald Shargel of the Law Offices of Gerald Shargel.)

Joseph A. Lewis II, a collector from Virginia has been mentioned in this blog (and Looting Matters) as the individual that is reported to have attempted to import an Egyptian sarcophagus (of Imesy) from Spain, and when it was challenged, apparently abandoning it (the coffin has now been returned by US authorities to Egypt). See here, and here. Initially the man was named (by two Florida lawyers) as Joseph A. Lewis III, but in a later draft of their paper they amended it to Joseph A. Lewis II, their carelessness leading to some confusion). A search of his home in Chesterfield Virginia by ICE agents reportedly revealed a Greco-Roman sarcophagus, Egyptian funerary boats and limestone figures, these were seized.

"Lewis allegedly purchased a Greco-Roman style Egyptian sarcophagus, a nesting set of three Egyptian sarcophagi, a set of Egyptian boats and Egyptian limestone figures (collectively, "Egyptian antiquities") from Khouli, who purchased those items from Alshdaifat and Ramadan. Each of these antiquities was exported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and smuggled into the United States. Khouli allegedly provided Lewis with false provenances which stated that the Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960's when, in fact, both Lewis and Khouli knew that Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers"

This is precisely why collectors who buy objects trusting they are from an "old collection" are unwise to even consider the transaction before ascertaining that this claim can be verified, documented and proven. Lewis will apparently be arraigned Thursday before Magistrate Judge Andrew Carter in Brooklyn federal courthouse. It is reported that he is represented by Peter Chavkin and Bridget Rohde of Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo.

Now Salem Alshdaifat is an interesting name. He is a V-Coins dealer (Holyland Numismatics, West Bloomfield, MI), also an ACCG Benefit Auction donor dealer. I have raised the question here of where the coins he deals in have come from, and it is interesting to see his name brought up in this context. With or without his name figuring in court, one might legitimately wonder about for example about a recent offer on V-Coins (you know, the "ethical" one?):

"500 uncleaned coins from the Middeleast and Egypt,
1,000.00 COINS available.

uncleaned coins, Greek, Roman, Judaean, Provencial, Byzantine, Islamic, and some rings. some small coins might have some Rare Emperors, we found befor Johannes, Leo, Zeno, Marcian and rare Vandalic coins in such lots, this lot is mostly uncleaned completly and some are cleaned in the edges or completly cleaned. plz note that just for this lot, we will ship only to USA, shipping will be Via Registred mail only.

Old collection, no doubt. As are the other bulk lots of Alexandrian and Ptolemaic coins he has on offer tonight. Some other Ptolemaics here too. None of the ones I looked at say which old collection they were in before they arrived in the coin shop - so where and how did they "surface"? Alshdaifat was arraigned Wednesday before a federal judge in Detroit Federal Court.

Now "Holyland" is a "wholesaler", that is somebody who has supplied bulk lots of soimilar coins to dealers. A number of his offerings on V-Coins are clearly marked dealer lots, and the "items sold" section of his V-Coins shopfront contains many more. So basically, if a dealer has bought one of these bulk lots and split them up into individual sales, sometimes sharing them with business partners, there must be a large number of collectors who have in their homes and cabinets coins originating in "Holyland Numismatics" dealer lots, and therefore sharing with them any issues of the provenance. Alshdaifat quite clearly has had access to high volumes of antiquities, especially coins, so where did they come from? A lot of them (but not all) are types that could well have been found in Egypt, particularly in the northern part of the country. The question has to be asked, how would they have left the source country in bulk?

Ayman Ramadan, a Jordanian national living in the United Arab Emirates, is a bit of a shadowy figure. He is noted by the newspapers as "an antiquity dealer from Dubai, United Arab Emirates". It turns out he runs the outfit I mentioned in an earlier post here, Nafertiti Eastern Sculptures Trading Co " (P.O Box: 111301 Bar Dubai, Dubai. United Arab Emirates). He is now is considered by (US) authorities to be a "fugitive".

Of course at a time when the question of artefacts looted from Egypt in the wake of the recent political disturbances there is very sensitive, this is not a good time for somebody to be caught with freshly-surfaced Egyptian antiquities on their hands. Note that also seized seem to be some from Iraq.

ICE Special-Agent-in Charge James Hayes, Jr., called the investigation "ground-breaking", he says this is "the first time an alleged cultural property network has been dismantled within the United States". Indeed it probably is. Most of the time antiquities stopped at the border are seized and sent home with fanfare, reaping political and foreign relations kudos, but rarely investigating the sender or addressee to any degree that would comprise any kind of investigation of the links in the illicit transfer of ownership of the artefacts concerned. Let us hope this case is a harbinger of a more pro-active policy on prosecuting the illicit artefact trade. It is gratifying to see that it involves coin dealers, as it is this milieu that has been most vociferous in recent years about so-called "collectors' rights" to material obtained and transported in defiance of cultural property laws. I doubt though that the investigation and seizures will give them pause for thought (indeed, I'd be very surprised to find them even discussing it at all on their forums and blogs). In any case, although "if convicted, the defendants each face a maximum of 20 years in prison", we all know that the four will just get slapped wrists from the court and told (asked nicely) not to do it again, like the Four Corners two dozen - if the American judicial system can't even deal with archaeological looting in their own country, what hope is there that they will actually deal with a case involving looting and smuggling outside the US? I do not see how Mr Ramadan can be brought to a US court.


Sources:
ICE News Release: July 14, 2011 - "ICE makes arrests and seizes cultural artifacts stolen from Egypt Set of Sarcophagi more than 2,000 years old" 14th July 2011.

Mitchel Maddux, 'Feds bust 4 in Brooklyn-based Egyptian antiquities trafficking ring', New York Post 14th July 2011.

John Marzulli, 'Feds bust group trying to smuggle Ancient Egyptian mummy coffins', New York Daily News, 14th July 2011.

Jessica Dye, 'Feds accuse 4 of smuggling Egyptian artifacts', Thomson Reuters News & Insight, 14th July 2011;

Kate Tayl o r, '4 Charged in Smuggling Egyptian Antiquities', New York Times July 14, 2011;

Keith Johnson, 'Alleged Antiquities Smugglers Busted', Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2011.

See Also: Looting Matters, Dealers Charged Following Egyptian Seizures

Vignette: A pair of bronze inlays (from a sarcophagus?) representing eyes sold by
Holyland Numismatics, where did they come from?
[yes, the dealer photographed them upside down]
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As Hawass flies to Peru, protesters call for the minister to step down

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There seems to be a pattern developing, when the Minister of Antiquities of Egypt is sitting in his office with his finger on the pulse, his critics are quiet; the moment he goes jet-setting off around the world spreading the message, the critics crawl out and start their whining. A few weeks back he was in the States and the accusations flew. He came back and they sat quiet. Now he's gone off to Peru to take part in a conference on repatriation and back home the fuss starts (Ola El-Saket, Mohamed Azouz, 'As Zahi Hawass flies to Peru, protesters call for the minister to step down', Al-Masry Al-Youm 3rd July 2011).

As Zahi Hawass, Egypt's antiquities minister, traveled to Peru on Sunday to represent Egypt in the second Conference on Retrieving Stolen Artifacts, dozens of people protested outside the Ministry of Defense demanding his removal from office.

Interesting location for the protest. The accusations being tossed about with gay abandon while he was State-side did not strike me as too convincing which is why I did not bother to blog about them. I'd go along with the new ones though.

The calls for his resignation stem from a number of complaints against him, included claims of irregularities regarding antique artifacts stolen during the Egyptian uprising earlier this year. "Zahi never provided official documents on what remains missing from the Egyptian Museum,” says Nasser Ibrahim, an employee at the ministry’s restoration department. On 28 January (dubbed "The Day of Rage"), looters broke into the Egyptian Museum overlooking Tahrir Square, after which, dozens of artifacts were reported missing. Hawass gave a number of conflicting statements after the break-in, at times admitting to the looting of artifacts, while at others assuring a furious local and international community that Egypt’s largest museum was safe. Reports have also suggested that not all artifacts at the museum are listed, making it impossible to determine what exactly was stolen. "We demand that an international committee be formed to create a thorough inventory of artifacts at the museum," said Ibrahim. “The security cameras at the museum were not working during the robbery. This is the responsibility of the former secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities,” says Intessar Gahrib, the media coordinator of the protest, in reference to Hawass, who held that position before he was appointed minister of antiquities. “We have submitted documents proving our claims to the General Prosecutor’s office, and we are demanding that the ruling military council look at them. They prove his negligence and corruption,” adds Gharib.

Now, actually I think he did in the end provide documentation (of sorts) of what was missing - after a huge delay which is indeed caused by the pitiful state of the documentation of the contents of the museum (for which previous directors of the museum and current staff must share responsibility with the Minister). Certainly I agree that since coming up to six months later, we have absolutely NO reliable information from the Egyptian authorities about what actually happened that night, and the official story (stories) is/are obviously a smokescreen, an international commission should indeed be set up to get those answers. Readers of this blog may remember that it is one of my contentions that the CCTV cameras were not working of the night of the thefts and apparently were still inoperative when the museum was reopened in February this year. Over in the Mahmoud Khalil Museum the same situation led to the jailing of the officials concerned, and there only one nineteenth century flower- painting was stolen, here we had unique artefacts from the New Kingdom swiped and damaged.

I think there is something else for the procurator to look into. Where are the missing objects? It has been claimed that the looters were random opportunist "red mercury seekers" from the streets. I think, conversely, the evidence available until now clearly points to an entirely different conclusion, in my opinion, it was a planned operation, apparently an "inside job". Nobody came in through any roof, they came up the stairs. If that is so, it would therefore stand to reason that the culprits are by now known to the authorities, some of the people (said to be) involved have been arrested and convicted, which means they surely already know where the rest of the artefacts are. So who has them? Where are they being kept? and when are those keeping them planning to reveal them? Just before the elections, maybe? I would say that the way the investigation of the location of all the missing artefacts (the sting, the Khan el-Khalili bust and especially the bag at the metro Station fiasco) was handled is indeed something for the state prosecutor to look into in great detail, just to make sure there was no cover-up.

The next bit of the Al-Masry Al-Youm article is pathetic:

Hawass was unavailable for comment. However, he spoke earlier of the Supreme Council of Antiquities’ efforts over the past few years in retrieving stolen artifacts and helping other countries do the same, Peru being one example. According to Hawass, Egypt played a pivotal role in the negotiations with the University of Yale to finally return 13 golden masks to Peru after a long-standing dispute. He also spoke of an extensive “wish list” developed in Cairo last year, citing artifacts stolen from Egypt that are to be demanded from museums in Europe and the US.

The journalists add a trenchant comment:

The recently missing items, however, are not on that list.

The reason for that however is, I submit, in all probability not quite what the journalists think.

Blanding Teacher Reaches Deal in Artefacts Case

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It seems there has been yet another plead deal in the Four Corners looting case. David Lacy, a mathematics teacher of Blanding, Utah, was one of the 26 people indicted in Utah, New Mexico and Colorado recently as a result of the Operation Cerberus investigation into artefact looting and trafficking. Lacy, who is the brother of San Juan County Sheriff Mike Lacy, was set for a six-day jury trial on July 11.

He was indicted on accusations that he sold a woman's prehistoric loin cloth, a turkey feather blanket, a decorated digging stick, a set of knife points and other artefacts for more than $11,000. He pleaded not guilty to the charges and, until Thursday, it appeared his would be the only case to go to trial. [...] Lacy fought the charges in part because a felony conviction could disqualify him from his job as a high school teacher.

Though admitting to being in possession of these 'injun' artefacts presumably will not? Most of the remaining 24 defendants (including two co-defendants charged alongside Lacy), reached plea agreements with federal prosecutors. None has been sentenced to prison (though Kevin Shumway has yet to be sentenced - that will happen Sept 16th). Two of the accused committed suicide rather than face charges.

On Thursday, both Lacy's attorney, Matthew Lewis, and assistant U.S. attorney Richard McKelvie declined to comment on the details of the "agreement in principle" they had reached. McKelvie said a change of plea hearing will be held in July, although no date has been set.

Source: Jennifer Dobner, 'Blanding teacher reaches deal in artifacts case', DeseretNews, June 30, 2011

Vignette: Goodbye Mr Chips

Smithsonian Shipwreck Show Scuppered

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According to Kate Taylor ('Shipwreck Show Postponed', New York Times June 28, 2011):

The Smithsonian Institution has indefinitely postponed its plans to mount an exhibition of Chinese artifacts salvaged from a shipwreck because of opposition from archeologists who say the objects were collected by a commercial treasure hunter in a manner that violated professional standards. The exhibition, “Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds,” was tentatively scheduled for next spring at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s Asian art museums.

It is apparently not off the cards indefinitely, the Museum says it might mount a “Shipwrecked” exhibit perhaps two years from now, giving time for the museums’ director, Julian Raby "time to address some of the archeologists’ concerns" (what's he going to do, make the salvage company put the stuff back and excavate it properly with more attention to detail this time? Sadly with archaeological sites you can't do that, once it's gone, it's gone - which is what the point is.)

The salvage company has said it mined the artifacts quickly to avoid looting.

That's like teenage joyriders stealing a Rolls Royce so a hoodlum doesn't.

Kudos to the Smithsonian for reversing its earlier decision and taking the moral lead over the exploitation of underwater archaeological sites simply as "Treasure".

Closed to Debate in Bangor

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I was talking about British archaeologists who support collectors and collecting the other day. In the Moneta-L message discussed in the post above this, ACCG employee John Hooker has obligingly supplied another example, this time from Wales. Interestingly he does so in the context of pontificating on the alleged "bad judgement" of "people with established reputations" to engage in the debate on the archaeological heritage and the illicit trade in antiquities. He warns, "This can result in a rapid loss of hard-earned reputation". As an example he appends a name-dropping anecdote:

I once directed Prof. Raimund Karl to one of Paul Barford's blog entries. Ray was shocked, as he had communicated with Paul Barford years ago. Ray is not only a long-time correspondent of mine but is an archaeologist specialist in both Iron Age and heritage matters and is the "head of school" at his university. He has an impressive CV for his positions in Austria, Germany and Wales. I cannot say what he said, but he had provided me with the quotable:

"There certainly are some fundamentalist archaeologists, too, who condemn any trading of antiquities regardless of the specific circumstances of the individual case, but those can reasonably safely be ignored."

He said that he already has said the same (in German) on television.

Well Karl lists as one of his research interests "heritage management" though does not reveal on his webpage whether he collects any antiquities or coins.

Professor Karl might find it interesting to pay more attention to the heritage debate in his adopted country. If he did, he would find that it is not exclusive, it does not "ignore" people whose views do not fit into the mainstream, but there is a much more open engagement. This is what English Heritage Conservation Policy Sustainable Management of the Historic Environment (online here) establishes . I am sure prof Karl will be well familiar with its content and implications (I am sorry I have not seen the corresponding document for Wales, it probably says much the same).

I am not sure how many of those "fundamentalist archaeologists" who "condemn any trading of antiquities" whatsoever there really are in the United Kingdom. It seems that such a position would be more prevalent in US circles (but again not as a general rule, even in AIA circles). I know of a few examples, two British (that post invited collectors to list others, such a list never materialised) and it seems to me that there can be very few others. This is even if we accept that for some reason they are afraid to raise their voice in criticism of the laissez faire policies represented by the PAS in Bloomsbury, partnering English and Welsh (for the moment) antiquity collectors.

Certainly I would not agree with them. In order for there to be an "illicit" market in antiquities, it means there is a licit one. I cannot see why any archaeologists ("fundamentalists" or not) would argue against the sale of Grand Tour antiquities like that sarcophagus side from the Adams interior at Lansdowne House discussed in the press a while ago. It was discovered, hoiked out and cut up long ago, and it has been well-documented by those who curated it and there is no question about the ethics involved in its acquisition (there were no ethical guidelines or such qualms in the Grand Tour years). No harm, either real or potential, is being done to the archaeological record by the sale of objects such as this with such well-documented collecting histories. This is licit antiquity (or as some would have it "ancient art" collecting) and I see nothing wrong with it. The only thing that for me is vaguely controversial is that one might perhaps question whether public funds should not be raised so that something like this would not be shut away in a private collection but a public one - but by purchase and not coercion, but in fact I see nothing wrong with an item with such a documented pedigree of private ownership remaining as such another generation or so. We might also debate whether the heritage is enhanced or depreciated by the fact that this object has now left the interior and setting of Lansdowne House, though of course there is nothing anyone can do about that if it is a result of the owners falling on hard times in the past, one may regret - as I am sure they do - that they had to sell it, but cannot criticise them for it.

It is not just Grand Tour artefacts that are on the market licitly. It has come to be accepted in most circles that the date 1970 (the first accessions to the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property) is a valid nominal cut-off point for licitness of antiquities. Anything documentable as having "surfaced" on the market before then can be treated for most purposes as if it were kosher - whether or not its acquisition in fact was. That seems reasonable to me (even though in fact there were earlier international documents highlighting the damaging effects of the illicit trade and clandestine artefact hunting on archaeological sites, and the 1970 Convention is far from a perfect tool).

I suspect that it is not so much "fundamentalist archaeologists" who are against the free circulation of artefacts which "surfaced" pre-1970 (leaving aside the rather extreme position of Zahi Hawass in Egypt).* If you look more carefully at the debates on "repatriation", while they may be supported by archaeologists, to a great degree the campaigns are being conducted by people from other areas of public life and for several different purposes. This is why I do not consider so-called "repatriation issues" to be an integral part of the set of problems which I discuss on this blog. The inclusion of this body of separate issues in the portable antiquity collecting debate confuses the issue. While there may be to an extent (a small, I would say, one) some justice in what people like Cuno say about these issues when seen in the context of "pre-1970 repatriation" debates, I see no absolutely grounds for applying them wholesale to the ongoing commerce in and collection (either private or public) of items more recently "surfaced" (from underground). Mixing the two only allows the "collectors' rights" (sic) lobbyists to confuse the public. (And I think they are doing this deliberately and dishonestly.)

I personally think that "pre-1970 repatriation" issues are only marginally related to the issue of the expanding international no-questions-asked antiquities market and artefact hunting and collecting. I am certainly against "fundamentalist" calls to "send it all back" in general, though think the issue should be openly discussed on a case by case basis.

I certainly do not agree with Raimund Karl's reported position that the views of any "fundamentalist archaeologists" about antiquity collecting and commerce should be simply "ignored". I think we (especially other archaeologists and heritage professionals) should encourage them to participate in the wider debate as it is only through an exchange of views that the core issues can be isolated and dealt with. Another archaeologist supportive of collecting, Gabriel Moshenska of UCL has pointed out in a recent forum discussion that the "metal detecting debate" is as much about splits within the archaeological community about what is important and what is not. One may disagree (as I do) about what he considers in that paper as "staggeringly unimportant", but that is where debate begins - not with simply dismissing an opposing view as something that "can reasonably safely be ignored". Let us see some more archaeologists in the UK taking the 'artefact hunting and preservation debate' bull by the horns and facing the issues instead of just running from them.


* It would be interesting to count how many archaeologists were at the Cairo Conference last year

A Closer Look at the New Kids on the Block

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Here's a closer look at the two copper alloy statuettes that re-appeared yesterday from somewhere, alongside two established to be on the list of missing objects from Cairo Egyptian Museum. All four were in the hands of some criminals who were "caught red handed" doing something or other somewhere.

They've been photographed on some big pieces of white polythene foam (the last lot had as the background Agfa photographic paper). This is the sort of inert foam you'd find in a conservation lab for packing.

On the left is a figure of Harpocrates about 18 cm (+/-) in height the state of which suggests it has been heavily but unevenly chemically stripped and maybe an attempt has been made to chemically repatinate it. If this is cleaning it looks like the sort of thing that might have happened thirty years ago. The cast is indistinct, rather blurry and disproportionate and schematic. The metal underneath the corrosion does not seem very eroded, except perhaps on the headdress. Is it a genuine antiquity? It looks very much like a bizarre bazaar piece.

On the right is an Osiris on a base with a tenon. The casting is sharp and precise, bears traces it seems of gilding. The patina is completely different, a thin layer of oxidation seems to lie over smooth metal, there is no differential corrosion where the gold (if that is what it is) contacts the copper alloy. It has been polished by handling. Is it a genuine antiquity?

From the photos it is difficult to say if these objects are ancient, the fact that a commission of the Egyptian MSA is still looking at them suggests they think they might be (in the Al-Ahram article it says specifically that on the basis of his initial examination Dr Tarek El-Awady says they are both genuine). What however is clear is that if they are, they come from two separate environments of deposition. If the Harpocrates had thicker corrosion products on it, it would have come from burial in a damper environment, while the Osiris looks as if it has never been buried, perhaps in a desert tomb/cave or whatever.

I do not think either of them are fresh dugups, my guess is that if they are ancient they come from a (genuine) old collection, or a museum/antiquities store - OR they found their way into Egypt from the foreign antiquities market - a possibility that we cannot rule out, it depends who these "criminals" were and what kind of activity they were involved in.

It is apparently a futile hope that we will be told much more by the Egyptian authorities, so for the moment these two objects and the origins of the other two which somehow wandered out of the Museum will remain a mystery - at least until there is a new government and hopefully we will see a government enquiry into the way this crisis came about and was dealt with as there are many unanswered questions.
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Smithsonian Ponders Ethics of Showing Treasures

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The Smithsonian has been planning to host an exhibition: “Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds", showing the contents of an Indonesian shipwreck discovered by fishermen off Belitung Island in Indonesia in 1998. The problem is that instead of being properly investigated in a multi-disciplinary project according to established methodology, this historically important shipwreck was commercially mined within a period of months by a commercial treasure hunter, and thus much of the information it might have provided about the ship’s crew and cargo was lost. This has been likened, even in the US, to modern-day cultural piracy (Kate Taylor, 'Treasures Pose Ethics Issues for Smithsonian', New York Times, April 24, 2011).

The exhibition was conceived by the government of Singapore, which owns the artifacts, and Julian Raby, the director of the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian's two Asian art museums. It is on display in Singapore through July and will then travel internationally. Although the Smithsonian says it has not made a final decision, the exhibition — which includes glazed pottery, rare pieces of early blue-and-white porcelain and the largest gold cup ever found from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) — is tentatively set to arrive at the Sackler in the spring of 2012.[...] The ship, which is believed to be Arab, was filled with a cargo of ninth-century Chinese ceramics and gold and silver vessels. Its discovery suggests that Tang China had substantial sea trade with the Middle East; scholars had previously thought that the trade routes were primarily over land, along the Silk Road.

The company that salvaged the Belitung wreck, Seabed Explorations, is run by a German engineer, Tilman Walterfang, former director of a German concrete company who saw economic opportunities in wreck hunting in Indonesia.

when fisherman first discovered the shipwreck in early August 1998, the Indonesian government, fearful of looting, ordered Seabed Explorations to begin an immediate round-the-clock recovery operation. It started within days. Although Mr. Walterfang eventually brought in a pair of archaeologists, including one, Michael Flecker, who wrote two journal articles about the ship, Mr. Walterfang conceded that, from an academic standpoint, “the overall situation would without doubt be described as ‘less than ideal.’ ”[...] Seabed Explorations sold the majority of the 63,000 artifacts recovered to a company owned by the Singapore government, for $32 million [...] Some artifacts have ended up on eBay and other online sites.

On April 5th a group of archaeologists and anthropologists from the National Academy of Sciences — including Robert McCormick Adams, a former leader of the Smithsonian — wrote a letter to G. Wayne Clough, the director of the Smithsonian, that proceeding with the proposed exhibition would "severely damage the stature and reputation" of the institution. This opinion has been shared in recent weeks by the Society for American Archaeology, the Council of American Maritime Museums and the International Committee for Underwater Cultural Heritage, as well as groups within the Smithsonian, including the members of the anthropology department and the Senate of Scientists at its National Museum of Natural History.

The salvage firm's director Walterfang was dismissive of the exhibition’s critics, suggesting that the exhibition was being used as a “Ping-Pong ball in yet another political game for the social climbers in Washington, D.C.”. Archaeologist Flecker is reported as having argued that the "purist approach of many archaeologists" is simply

not practical in developing countries like Indonesia, where governments are poor and the risk of looting is high. In those circumstances, he wrote, archaeologists and commercial salvagers should cooperate “to document those sites and the artifacts recovered from them before too much information is lost.”

So a bit like an underwater Portable Antiquities Scheme then.

It will be interesting if the Smithsonian decide today not to host this ethically-questionable exhibition. If the haste and unmethodical manner in which they were excavated in our times is a criterion disqualifying Treasures from being exhibited in a proper museum, what are we to say of the hundreds of hoards and other finds hoiked out of the ground in Britain by metal-detector wielding treasure hunters? I wonder whether the Smithsonian will be seeking opinions form the British Museum and their Portable Antiquities Scheme and treasure Unit about their ethical dilemma?

Let's see if the Smithsonian allow a little thing like ethics to interfere with their exhibition plans.

An announcement on whether or not it will proceed with the show is expected in late May.

"Lead Codices" Saga continues: the Jordanian Response

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On Sunday, the Jordanian government announced that it was beginning moves to retrieve dozens of artefacts believed to have been stolen from sites in north Jordan and smuggled to Israel by an Israeli merchant.

"The Jordanian government has obtained data and documents from a British expert which prove that an Israeli merchant has illegally smuggled important artefacts from northern Jordan to Israel,” Director of the Antiquities Department Ziyad Saad told a press conference. He said that the stolen antiquities included 70 lead codices, scrolls and copper plates, all of them date back to the early Christian era of the 1st century A.C. The artifacts are believed to have been stolen from Jordan between 2005 and 2007, officials said.

The identity of the "British expert" was not revealed. Thus the sorry saga of the so-called "Lead codices" which have been in the news recently gets even more complicated. The current owner Hassan Saida, an illiterate Israeli Bedouin truck company owner from the northern Israeli village of Um-al-Ghanam (now) claims that the artefacts were originally found about five years ago in a cave in the village of Saham in Jordan, close to where Israel, Jordan and Syria’s Golan Heights converge and near to the site at Umm Qais (ancient Gadara/ Antiochia Semiramis), a popular tourist destination. Allegedly

a flash flood scoured away the dusty mountain soil to reveal what looked like a large capstone. When this was levered aside, a cave was discovered with a large number of small niches set into the walls. Each of these niches contained a booklet. There were also other objects, including some metal plates and rolled lead scrolls.

So, a story like many which account for the appearance of decontextualised artefacts on the global antiquities market. Accidental discovery not reported to the authorities, objects smuggled out of the country, various attempts to authenticate them and market them. A writer David Ellington has got involved in attempting to prove their authenticity as ancient objects. His efforts are hindered by the appearance of the codices themselves. Already in March, as news was breaking about what the press was hailing as a momentous discovery, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), dismissed the books as a forgery and as being a "mixture of incompatible periods and styles … without any connection or logic. Such forged motifs can be found in their thousands in the antiquities markets of Jordan and elsewhere in the Middle East". So they are, many of the images that can be seen on the photos released to date look as if they are drawn from coins and pictures in books of antiquities (including a garbled legend obviously miscopied from the tombstone of a certain Abgar [note the name] in Amman Museum).

Photo: a comedy codex (Yahoo news)


Photo: Some of the imagery on a copper plate apparently part of the cache being studied by David Elkington: (Elkington via Palaeojudaica)

Of course none of these doubts would exist if the objects had been reported to the authorities upon discovery as Jordanian law requires and the alleged findspot immediately examined by archaeologists, and the objects subjected to proper study. Instead they were smuggled out of the country and now apparently are on the market with various scholar being approached to offer opinions on selected aspects of the objects. Those that do so obviously have no scruples about dealing with smuggled antiquities.

According to the Telegraph, Saida's Bedouin business partner:

met a villager in Jordan who said he had some ancient artefacts to sell. The business partner was apparently shown two very small metal books. He brought them back over the border to Israel and Saida became entranced by them, coming to believe they had magical properties and that it was his fate to collect as many as he could. The arid, mountainous area where they were found is both militarily sensitive and agriculturally poor. The local people have for generations supplemented their income by hoarding and selling archeological artefacts found in caves. More of the booklets were clandestinely smuggled across the border by drivers working for Saida – the smaller ones were typically worn openly as charms hanging from chains around the drivers’ necks, the larger concealed behind car and lorry dashboards. In order to finance the purchase of booklets from the Jordanians who had initially discovered them, Saida allegedly went into partnership with a number of other people – including his lawyer from Haifa, Israel. [...] The artefacts have been seen by multi-millionaire collectors of antiquities in both Israel and Europe – and Saida has been offered tens of millions of pounds for just a few of them, but has declined to sell any.

when David Ellington's book comes out maybe Saida (photo right from Daily Mail) was planning on changing his mind.

If we follow the recent Telegraph and Mail stories, we may attempt a reconstruction of events. Is it the case that a truck driver working for Saida saw a business opportunity when approached by a dodgy dealer in Jordan who proffered what he took to be ancient artefacts with the story about them being discovered in a cave (the cave somebody showed a journalist and is pictured in a Daily Mail photo looks to be artificial, perhaps a tomb) and there being more available for purchase? Did he then take them across the border where his employer agreed that there was an opportunity to make money from 'liberating' what they took to be genuine artefacts from getting into the hands of Jordanian archaeologists? Is it the case therefore that over a period of time these objects were bought from the Jordanian - unaware that the man was in fact peddling fake artefacts recently made in Jordan probably with an eye to the tourist market? Were they then smuggled piecemeal across the border in the normal manner in which small illicitly obtained ancient artefacts are removed from their country - either hidden about the person of the smuggler, or hidden away in a place hard for customs and border officials to locate and search? Then the new owner would presumably have started looking about for a buyer, Sotheby's approached in 2007 was reportedly not interested due to the problems of the origins and nature of the objects and the owner's title to them. Then writer David Ellington became interested and after a while there was an initial flurry of international interest. Then when the nature of the objects became clear, questions started to be raised. Meanwhile is it not the case that a Jordanian artefact faker is counting the money he got from two Israeli truckers, and Mr Saida is going to find himself with some unsaleable lead scrap on his hands? If these things had been bought from a "reputable dealer", at least the buyer could sue for his money back when the fraud came to light.

The only people who have not yet had a chance to examine this material thoroughly are precisely the people who should have been the first, the Jordanians on whose territory these objects were allegedly found. They are now forced to attempt to get full access to them by legal means, which would be difficult enough if they were real, I suspect there could be serious legal problems when the verdict is out that they are not necessarily so, and so in point of fact no offence would necessarily have been committed in moving them across a border. I hope if they have been recently smuggled out of Jordan, the Jordanians do get the artefacts back. I hope they publish photos of them all and the results of the examination which I am confident will show they are a modern pastiche and act as a warning to all who try to pull a fast one and attempt to invest in illicit antiquities. (Let Mr Ellington go ahead by all means and publish his reasons for deducing they are not, though bearing in mind that he is describing what seem likely to be illicitly obtained artefacts). Let the Jordanians question the truck driver(s) mentioned by the Telegraph, who reportedly illegally failed to declare what he had bought as dug-up antiquities, and let everybody learn that the no-questions-asked buying and selling and transporting of dugup artefacts across international borders carries a multitude of risks of many types, of which falsification of history is one.

See:
Rogue Classicism (David Meadows): Lead Codices Silliness (March 30th 2011) and Lead Codices – Once More into the ‘Reach’ (April 3rd 2011)

Palaeojudaica (Jim Davila): Hebrew-inscribed-metal-codices watch, a fake (April 1st 2011), quoting a letter by Peter Thonemann.

Olga Craig: 'Could this couple's Bible 'codices' tell the true story of Christ's life?', Telegraph 3rd April 2011.

Nick Pryer, 'Is this the first ever portrait of Jesus? The incredible story of 70 ancient books hidden in a cave for nearly 2,000 years', Daily Mail 3rd April 2011.

Abdul Jalil Mustafa, 'Jordan in bid to regain artifacts stolen by Israeli merchant', Arab News Apr 3, 2011.

ADDENDUM:
See now Tom Verenna, 'New Roundup on Lead Codices and Additional Information', April 3, 2011,

Robert Deutsch: "A Follow up by Robert Deutsch on the ‘Lead Codices’" on the 'Zwinglius Redivivus' blog, 5 April 2011

and Peter Thonemann, "The Messiah codex decoded", Times Literary Supplement, 6 April 2011.


Vignette at top:Ziad al-Saad at an April 3 conference about the bid to retrieve the artefacts (India Times).

A Warning From Beyond the Grave for Looters

Attention has been focussed on the legal, rather than moral, aspects of the current retention by the St Louis Art Museum of the cartonnage mask which proper due diligence should have revealed clearly should be in the archives of the 1952 excavation by archaeologist Mohammed Zakaria Goneim in Sakkara. The excavation has been published (Goneim  1956), but there is a nice online resource detailing her burial by K.M. Johnston, a previous correspondent with this blog, on Egyptology Geek and Amduat Wiki.

Johnston notes that the contents of Ka Nefer Nefer’s burial are in several respects extraordinary for such a simple interment. The body has the cartonnage accompaniments of a mummy, but was not actually mummified. A recent re-examination in association with the upcoming court case of the field catalogue of finds still held in Egypt however reveals (pers. comm. A. Mustafa Laff, Feb 2011) that also now missing from the Sakkara storeroom (presumably removed at the same time as the mask and presumably scattered in the no-questions-asked antiquities trade), are several fragments of cartonnage bands found loose in the vicinity of the body. Although, unlike the mask, they do not bear the name of the deceased, they clearly belong to this burial. There is a hieratic inscription on the cartonnage, and the text (visible in  the low resolution photos in the field journal) is transcribed as below by Prof. Ivar Lupe, egyptologist in the Estonian Academy of Sciences, whose  recent research has focussed on Ramesside non-royal burial practices and who will be publishing this new discovery in due course:
Lupe observes that a feature of great interest in these lost fragments is that alongside the usual funerary formulae, the mummy bands contain a text of the type popularly known as a „mummy’s curse”.  Lupe translates this portion of the text as follows:

"Death will come on swift wings to those who disturb my peace and shall do evil or wickedness to this. The  City of the Gate  will fall, and to its land will come fire, water and pestilence [...]."

This seems to me a further argument for returning Ka Nefer Nefer's coffin mask to  Egypt to rejoin the rest of the material excavated from her burial. It is what she would have wanted. The formulae are well known from other inscriptions of this type, but Prof. Lupe was unable to decipher the meaning of the „City of the Gate” in an ancient Egyptian context, suggesting it either refers to a local town or more likely refers to a military outpost on Egypt’s western borders in the Delta, referring to a text on a Late Ramesside papyrus from Deir El-Medina in a time of crisis at the end of the 21st dynasty which makes reference to the „foreign-born princes” ruling in a „City of the Gate on the Western Horizon” indicating a collapse of central control of this strategically important region.


Readers cannot fail to note the coincidence that St Louis which refuses to allow Ka Nefer Nefer’s face to be reunited with the rest of her burial also calls itself the „Gateway to the West”. One may only speculate whether the priests and seers (re)burying Ka Nefer Nefer's remains foresaw the violation of the integrity of her burial and  were issuing a warning to the people of St Louis, that under the rule of a foreign-born prince „fire, water and pestilence” will visit their land. Just to be on the SAFE side, in their place, and given all the other factors, I would be urging the local museum to give it back right now.


Reference: (Goneim, M. Zakaria. The Lost Pyramid. Rinehardt & Co Inc. 1956. pp  64-66; Goneim, M. Zakaria, Service des Antiquites de L'Egypte. Horus  Sekhem-khet - The Unfinished Step Pyramid At Saqqara, Volume 1.  Excavations at Saqqara. Imprimerie de L'Institut Francais D'Archeologie  Orientale. Cairo. 1957.  pp 23-27, Plates LXVII-LXXI)

U.S. Government Notions of Conservation?

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The US no-questions-asked market for dug-up antiquities is one of the largest in the world, accounting according to some observers for half the global demand. Yet the legislative response to the crisis this creates is utterly half-assed, and what measures there are are even being undermined by legislators in cohort with the principle exploiters. Why need this surprise us, given the general myopic exploitive attitude the entire nation seems to have to the natural resources of this planet?

Some US citizens however raised concerns a few weeks ago about mysterious mass deaths of wild birds in several states, they just dropped out of the sky, prompting concern about accidental environmental contamination. No need to worry on that account, it seems the conservationally-challenged US government is doing it deliberately. In an article published by The NaturalNews Network (U.S. government commits avian holocaust with mass poisoning of millions of birds) we learn that in 2009 alone, the following bird populations were poisoned and killed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, using US taxpayer dollars, listed as "Intentional" and "Killed / Euthanized":

Brown-headed cowbirds: 1,046,109
European Starlings: 1,259,714
Red-winged blackbirds: 965,889
Canadian geese: 24,519
Grackles: 93,210
Pigeons: 96,297

...plus tens of thousands of crows, doves, ducks, falcons, finches, gulls, hawks, herons, owls, ravens, sparrows, swallows, swans, turkeys, vultures and woodpeckers, among other animals. [...] also murdered in 2009 by the USDA are victims of other species: 27,000 beavers, 1700 bobcats, 81,000 coyotes, 2,000 gray foxes, 336 mountain lions, 1900 woodchucks, 130 porcupines, 12,000 raccoons, 20,000 squirrels, 30,000 wild pigs, 478 wolves.

See the list yourself at: http://www.naturalnews.com/files/US...

And hundreds of thousands of foreign and domestic archaeological sites trashed all over the world so greedy morally-challenged collectors can fill their coin cabinets and living room antiquity display cases. These are the people with which UK metal detectorists and antiquity collectors together with their archaeological "partners" are intimate bedfellows.




Kill-happy Nebraskan farmers cannot actually work out they need to cover their feed?