Friday 14 December 2012

Mixantik Papyri Online Again (Would You Buy Kiswa From this Man?)



 Dorothy King has a detailed post on the Istanbul-based 'Mixantik" who disappeared a while back when we started writing about him back at the beginning of November.  Then he morphed into another seller with private feedback. Now Dorothy is reporting that he's back and the feedback is public. It's interesting to look at the old listings, like this one from the beginning of October with this sale "Greek-coptic -ROMAN Rare Egyptian PAPYRUS FRAGMENT" bought by buyer u***t (translates to   guitarsandantiques, Feedback score 63) for just US $282.00 [what price irreplaceable loss of history?].  There is quite a difference between what the objects look like on the page now (presumably a Kaaba Kiswah fragment) and what the vignette shows (compare both with object description).  Now why would somebody hide the photo ?
 

Anyway, if we look at the restored feedback we see that on the 1st November he managed to sell three of the grubby rolled-up papyri (to low-feedback members costas_b , asterixmathieu2010, and edsbonebed) with descriptions like  "Greek-coptic -ROMAN Rare Egyptian PAPYRUS FRAGMENT dead roll". prices ranged from 150 to 570 dollars.

Now he has three fragments of papyri, nice regular shapes, just right for framing to give your man-cave the air of culture-erudishun, maybe imply an Indiana-Jones far-off-lands adventurism-in-search-of-lost treasures (from your armchair). Dorothy King illustrates them and provides more details.

As Dorothy King points out, scattering the disparate fragments from any find like this will make it impossible to join them and study the whole document. 

What I wonder is whether anyone seeing what this individual is trading would be at all interested in buying Kiswa which these hands have touched. 
 

2 comments:

lalbertson said...

His eBay profile is gone again. 12/15/12 L. Albertson, ARCA
www.artcrimeresearch.org

Paul Barford said...

No such luck, it's still up.

 
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