Lobbyists like Peter Tompa and all the rest will deny it until they are blue in the face, but coin collectors have a large share of the blame for encouraging archaeological looting (ILH Staff Thousands of ancient coins recovered in raid on Ashkelon jewelry store 10 Nov, 2021)>
Inspectors from the Antiquities Robbery Prevention Unit in the Israel Antiquities Authority have retrieved a collection of over 6,000 ancient coins that were being illegally sold. After scouring digital platforms to track down the coins, members of the unit pinned their suspicions on the owner of a jewelry store in Ashkelon whom they believed to be selling the coins in violation of the country's antiquities laws. When the seller's home and business were raided, officials found thousands of coins from various eras that were intended for sale or trade. Inspectors also found metal [detector]s and digging equipment that they suspect the seller used to steal artifacts from archaeological excavations.[...] Ilan Hadad, national inspector for trading at the IAA, explained that "Illegal trade in antiquities comprises a critical link in the chain that feeds off antiquities theft. Antiquities theft strikes an irreversible blow to the country's ancient sites. "The robbers, who dig at archaeological sites, destroying them out of greed, cut the antiquities off from their archaeological context and erase entire chapters of the history of the Land of Israel. These are stories that will now never be told," Hadad said.and the no-questions-aske antiquities trade is constructed in such a way as to conceal all traces of where items like this come from, and how they got on the market.
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2 comments:
I'm confused. Trade in Antiquities is legal in Israel. This guy obviously just didn't have a license. Which is something you would oppose also. Not everybody in the world is going to conform to your Picayune set of rules. Your blog seems more about self gratification than anything. But honestly, if you were more into self-flagellation there would be more gratification for your readers.
New anonymous account "coinee" (interest in flagellation noted), is "confused". So much so, it seems no real point is made. Presumably he'd be one of those that will deny until they are blue in the face, "that COIN collectors have a large share of the blame for encouraging archaeological looting" and that "the no-questions-aske antiquities trade is constructed in such a way as to conceal all traces of where items like this come from, and how they got on the market".
This kind of reaction time-and-time-again from the coin fondlers is precisely the reason why I cannot accept that self-regulation is the answer to this problem.
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