David Gill challenges the current US curators of one of the more dodgy-looking antiquities today, the Ka Nefer Nefer mummy mask to explain its two "parallel" and mutually exclusive collecting histories ("SLAM: will the museum do the right thing?", August 12, 2013). He brings the matter to its basis, the matter of the personal integrity of the museum professionals now most deeply involved in the battle to avoid it being returned to Egypt. How much is that worth? Writing of the mask's apparent ability to be in two places at once, he asserts:I do not believe it. Do the curators at SLAM believe it? Will they publish the full authenticated and documented collecting history? And how do they explain the mask's appearance in Cairo in 1966? Perhaps Jason Busch, the newly appointed deputy director would like to make a comment? Or how about the director, Brent R. Benjamin?He omits to mention the fact that the object quite obviously has an ancient ownership inscription removed which the SLAM-accepted collecting history fails to account for.
This is now 100% about integrity.
UPDATE 14.08.13
David Gill ('SLAM Director: Question of Integrity', August 13, 2013) makes that point again, this time illustrating it with a picture of two faces pointedly superimposed...
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