“Little Desire to Understand the Issues or Circumstances Involved" What's new?

The ancient coin dealers’ lobby group the ACCG seems to be seeking new members and apparently feels the best way to do this is to try and stir up some (self-) righteous indignation to create solidarity within the ranks of the collectors they wish to represent. Thus it was that a few days ago Californian antiquities dealer and self-proclaimed “professional numismatist” Dave Welsh (Classical coins) started up some alarmist nonsense about German heritage authorities raiding pensioners’ homes and confiscating collections as a result of some imaginary new “import laws of September 2008”.

This started with a misleading post on Sat Jan 31, 2009 on the coin dealers’ forum Unidroit-L this was followed by other similarly alarmist posts made the next day (Sun Feb 1, 2009) on several forums such as Moneta-L, Unidroit-L and Ancient artifacts (“Collections Confiscated - Coin Collectors Criminalized”). Despite the fact that this message contained a number of factual errors it was reposted on the same day by Peter Tompa as a “translation” (it is not) of a news article on his blog (“German police run amok…). On the Ancient Artifacts forum on Tuesday I wrote a post on the ancient artefacts forum where Welsh had posteed the original message pointing out the factual errors in what he was writing and which other ACCG-affiliated individuals were now eagerly repeating. Welsh was making things up as he went along, had not checked the facts and (not for the first time) totally misrepresenting the nature of the events taking place in the heart of Europe. A similar post had appeared on this blog earlier. These are not new events, and we have all had the opportunity to find out more about the background, some of us have made use of those opportunities, but others seem not to have done so.

I therefore am “surprised” (well, having seen US ancient coin dealers in action before, actually I am not) to see that several days on Welsh is still persisting in his misrepresentation. On Wednesday he posting on his blog a text Die Wacht am Rhein holding on to the original alarmist and totally false version which he had posted four days earlier on various forums and which were there shown there to be in error. Why? Well, apparently the truth does not serve his purpose. (It seems to me a general characteristic of all those involved (as producer or consumer) to see and hear only what they want to see and hear.)

As a result of this, now Nathan Elkins has also tried to set the record straight (Police Action with Antiquities and Ancient Coins in Germany: Some Clarifications and a Call for Reason). He points out that “since American dealers and collectors have found out about these events, there has been little reason in the ensuing discussions or little desire to understand the issues or circumstances involved”. Personally, I would have put that in stronger terms, but Nathan is a polite chap. After setting out the facts of these recent stolen property cases (which are of course not at all what the Californian dealer suggests), he makes a point with which it is difficult not to agree:

When it comes to both law and ethics, "good faith" is simply not a substitute for due diligence. It is up to collectors to demand greater transparency and due diligence from dealers and/or to be more vigilant about the coins they choose to buy for themselves and where they are coming from. These events provide an opportunity for dialogue about how collectors can avoid buying recently looted and stolen goods and how they can insist on change in the current state of the "no questions asked" market. Consumers have the power to change the way the market operates.

I think we have here in a nutshell why dealers in "no-questions-asked" unprovenanced antiquities are so unwilling to see any kind of open discussion of the connection between collecting of and commerce in portable antiquities and looting of archaeological sites to produce the fresh quantities of collectables that this exploitive industry needs.

Computers, don't you just love to hate them?

If anyone is waiting for a reply to emails, wants to share some portable antiquities scandal, warn me of impending lawsuits, ask where their translated (ahem) texts are or whatever... this is just to let anyone who thinks of looking here to see if I am still alive that I'll be off-line for a while after a spectacular meltdown yesterday of my computer. So I will be spending much of the next few days hunting down and installing the backup files into the next incarnation of my machine (I am writing this on Barford Junior's old computer, on which I cannot seem to get my email account working just now).

Metal detectorists and portable antiquity fans whose ears might have pricked up at the news will be pleased to know that the manuscript of the book on the UK's Portable Antiquities Heritage was not lost, the most up to date copy is safe in England (as well as archived away on several discs). So not all is lost eh?

'History Lost' expo at Europarliament in Brussels

The "History Lost" multimedia exhibition on the illicit antiquities trade and its impact on society and culture will officially open at the European Parliament in Brussels on Feb. 10, hosted by the Hellenic Foundation for Culture, with the support of the chairperson of the Europarliament's committee on culture and education, Katerina Batzeli.

The exhibition, to be held at the EP's Yehudi Menuhin Hall on Feb. 9-13, will feature copies of finds that have been returned recently to Greece and Cyprus, following relevant requests and has already been presented in Trieste, Lisbon and Dublin.

Odyssey Marine Exploration Seizes on National Icon: How will Britain React?

"Tampa, FL – February 2, 2009 - Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. (NasdaqCM: OMEX), pioneers in the field of deep-ocean shipwreck exploration, has discovered the long-sought shipwreck of HMS Victory lost in 1744, solving one of the greatest mysteries in naval history. ..."
and presumably looks to make a pretty packet from raising artefacts from her and selling them since that is what they are in the business for. The trouble is that these are the remains of a warship of the British navy and went down with all hands, so its a grave.

No problem. The British like letting treasure hunters do their thing on archaeological sites on land and under water, so it is no surprise to learn that "terms of collaboration between Odyssey and the UK MOD on the project are currently being negotiated, and an agreement similar to the Sussex Partnering agreement has been proposed". That's all we need.

There is an interesting report about the site that was initially code-named "Legend" here and (unlike the Black Swan affair at the time of discovery), we learn the names of the archaeologists involved: Neil Cunningham Dobson, Dr. Sean Kingsley, the former is acceredited as employed by Odyssey. They give all the reasons why they think the site should be explored and not preserved.

The preliminary "pre-disturbance" work on the wreck will figure on a Discovery Channel “Treasure Quest” episode, airing in the United States on Thursday, February 5 at 10PM ET/PT and in the UK on Sunday, February 8 at 9:00 PM.

Illustration, The Victory (from Treasure Quest).

Whatever happened to the 'Cyprus Coin Conspiracy'?

A few months ago as a result of the MOU about the import of archaeological artefacts from Cyprus into the USA, the portable antiquity collecting forums were full of talk about some vast conspiracy aimed at portable antiquity collectors, collecting, "truth justice and the American way". A group of coin dealers set themselves up as shining crusaders ready to fight the good fight agains the forces of darkness that had decided (shock horror) that ancient coins were archaeological artefacts. They held a "benefit auction" selling mainly contextless coins to raise loads and loads of money for the fight against this notion. They claimed they had leaked information from the CPAC, they made a Freedom of Information Request and got reams and reams of paper on the basis of which all manner of spurious conspiracy theories were constructed and proposed in solemn tones. Then.... silence on the issue.

Could it be that the coin dealers' lobby group ACCG finally realised that in fact there was no way they could fight the rather obvious fact that ancient coins are archaeological artefacts? Neither in court, nor in the eyes of public opinion? Is this why they seem to have lost impetus on this issue? After all, when coins were included in (they say "added" to) the China MOU which was announced a few days ago, all that happened was that they grumbled and mumbled a bit, but certainly no talk emerged of another FOI request or any "fight". So are they in fact going to fight the decision behind the Cyprus MOU? I think we all have a right to know. (And if they are not, what are they going to do with all the money they raised for that specific purpose?)

Now the ACCG seems up in arms about recent events involving coin collectors and metal detectorists in Germany. They seem determined to misrepresent these events as the harbinger of the return of nazism or something, hoping to rouse the US collector and convince them that the ACCG is worth supporting. They have just appointed a new officer to help increase membership numbers (are they flagging, or do they just need more funds?). In fact, the story they are putting around has very little relation to any of the real facts in these cases (not all of which am I at liberty to write here for various reasons). US collectors of portable antiquities (especially coins) seem to be a gullible lot and are reacting predictably to the latest announcement by the ACCG of the next "great conspiracy against us collectors".

It seems to me that the coin dealers' lobby group ACCG has no overall plan, but is lurching from one made-up "cause" to another, trying to avoid facing the real issiuue which is the no-questions-asked market which these dealers insist must be retained and which they insist is not in any way deleterious to the conservation of the world's archaeological resource, even though their businesses and their clients hunger for great chunks of it as cheaply as possible.

Illicit Trade in Egyptian artefacts: a collector speaks

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In the previous post I made a mention of what an antiquities collector said on Yahoo's ancient artifacts forum about the origins of some shabtis that have been appearing on the market in some quantities recently. In it we see the main problem is the no-questions-asked way in which artefacts like this change hands. Here is some more of what the collector said:

I know a very go[o]d friendthat lives in Egypt and sells Egyptain oranments to Austrila, South Africa and has had his fingers in the illegal trade too. He tells methat in the last 5 to 6 years dealing in antiques is a huge trade inEgypt esp[ecially] with tourism not being as good as it use to be. He tells me

that the main places of sale is to Germany and the Nordic countires, he says people pay the price and don't ask
q[uestion]s. He says hundrends of "low" value objects
are discovered weekly. I was told that when locals are employed to work in the winter dig season they make sure they pocket a number of items for themselves to see themselves through times of no work etc. [...] He also pointed out to me that there a quite a few excavations going on in the delta parts of Egypt and a lot of pottery has been discovered and is being sold illegally to Europe. In desperate times people sell there hertiage next to nothing.

Well, no-questions-asked collectors buying these items stolen from excavations are no doubt are very happy to get their preciouses at such prices. Is Mr Seshan's friend implying that he thinks the 'Wenneb.. shabtis' we are discussing were stolen from an excavation by somebody temporarily employed to take part in the project?

Collectors so often try to justify themselves that by "giving artefacts a good home" they are in some way "saving" them. If they are being stolen from excavations in progress they are not, they are contributing to the destruction of knowledge. Some collectors suggest that if they did not buy the artefacts, the metal would be melted down, because - they claim - the real (sic) destruction of archaeological sites all over the world is not done by looters looking for artefacts to sell, but by scrap metal merchants, looking for metal to melt down. 'Wenneb...'s' shabtis however are in no danger of that, but what may have happened to any metal objects in his tomb equipment is another matter. Where is it? How does the collector buying a dodgy shabti on eBay know how the rest of the assemblage was treated? An assemblages that was dug up and dug into, divided and discarded in order to put a few brightly coloured and shiny pieces of mysteriously-marked faience onto the foreign markets. This is a very feeble (and object-centred) argument.

Mr Seshan's informant "has had a finger in the illegal trade" (it says a lot of portable antiquity collectors that there are not too many other milieus where somebody could write on a public forum that he has a good friend who engages in illegal activity and not attract negative comment). It is interesting that he is suggesting that the illicit trade is on the rise in Egypt.

The collectors would say that this is because "Egypt has restrictive laws" which prevent "finders" benefitting from a reward system like in the UK. But our informant is sugesting that many of the finds which are reaching the western markets come from theft, pure and simple, from excavations. Since no-questions-asked dealership is unable to tell us how many items reaching foreign markets were "found" and how many "taken", this argument really has no force.

It is interesting to learn that the "main places of sale" for illicitly obtained artefacts from Egypt are now "Germany and the Nordic countries" where there are collectors (or dealers?) who "pay the price and don't ask questions". Presumably though these countries are just as much staging posts for the movement of these items further afield.

"The master of the Opener of the Roads, the Saint of the Tent exists" - but his tomb has been rifled by collectors

The home-grown hieroglyphists puzzle over the symbols.
"wn nb p(A) wp-wA.wt Dsr(w) iAm.t is - that's Wennebpawepwaoetdjeseroeiamet, is there a title to start with? Does the name starts with pA-(n)-wp-wA.wt or perhaps pA-n-inpw? Mysteries to solve".
Not least is the mystery where these archaeological finds come from and how they got to the dealers who are currently selling them by the bucketload. "As for the provenance of this shabti, all i get is that they are coming from a dutch collection and i can't get anymore informations. Bron told me that there are hundreds of these shabtis left. And i have seen many of them on ebay, all slightly diffrents". That's Bron Lipkin (see below) [see also the update at the bottom].

A collector called Seshan (Moodley? I have a recollection he's South African) says "I have three of these little shabti's from the same owner" Another collector called Cédric P. near Montpellier has "a dozen of these shabti myself now. And you can find some of them on Bron's site, and 3 or four more on ebay. Rolf has one on Hélios Gallery."

Here is what the Lipkin (Collector Antiquities) was offering [they have since been withdrawn from sale - this is an old link 8/2/09, but the page may nevertheless still be visible for a while]:
Four interesting small inscribed shabtis.[...] All approx 55mm All intact Late Period. Circa 500 BC Price: 75 each GBP. No provenance is mentioned.

Here's the Helios Gallery (Rolf Kiaer , Lower Kingsdown, Wiltshire UK) one [they were later withdrawn from sale, the link is now broken 8/2/09]: A pale blue/green glazed faience ushabti figure of squat form with a moulded hieroglyphic inscription extending along the full length of the back. Egypt, Ptolemaic Period, 332-30 BC Intact, the small brown patches are accretions which were created during firing. Size: 5.9 x 2.4 cms Ex. private collection, Denmark.

and here was an eBay one (Stormbroek antiquities/ Ancient Art Gallery Stormbroek BV, Ekkersrijt 4411, Son en Breughel, Netherlands - the address is an industrial estate just north of Eindhoven, proprietor seems to be A.C. Wouters):
17472 Ancient Egyptian faience Ushabti with hieroglyphic textAncient Egyptian faience Ushabti with hieroglyphic textLate Dynastic Period c. 26th Dynasty, 664 - 525 BCHeight : 5.8 cm" No provenance is given
Stormbroek seems to have been one of the dealers that was first to offer these items. They seem to have been telling their clients that the material came from a 'Dutch private collection'.

Dik van Bommel, knowledgeable collector of ushabti figurines writes:"Where does this batch come from, is it fresh (illegal) or comes it from a attick ;-/. I did not know of it's existence for 6 month's or so". Confirmation of this artefact's relatively recent appearance on the market in Egypt too comes from Seshan: "I know a very god friend that lives in Egypt and sells Egyptain oranments to Austrila, South Africa and has had his fingers in the illegal trade too. [...] He told me he has seen at lest 3 of these shabtis in quetsion in Egypt over the past few months. But his asking price is more than what they are sold for than stormbroek etc. I would assume if you buy in bulk etc you would get a better price.Therefore I would say more than likey they are a new find."

So let us pose a hypothesis. So far (almost) no evidence has been forthcoming from the dealers or collectors that these objects were outside Egypt before 1970, or 1983 or whenever. In fact almost everything seems to point to them being recent finds which have only in the past few months appeared on the market, but we learn that one dealer seems to know that there are "hundreds" of them. One dealer is telling its clients that they came from a "Dutch collection" (Stormbroek), another (Helios) says a "Danish collection" - both unnamed. But then, if they are only just now appearing on any market, how long were they in these "collections" for? Are these not just euphemisms? The collectors on the forum seem to be in little doubt that these are fresh finds illegally exported.

What is interesting is that two of these are members of the ADA whose code of conduct involves the dealers undertaking to

"establish the identity of the vendor and obtain a warranty that they have good title to the objects and where applicable have confirmation from the vendor that the item has been exported or imported in conformity with local laws" and "not to purchase or sell objects until I have established, to the best of my ability, that such objects were not stolen from excavations, architectural monuments, public institutions or private property".

we note that it says "excavations" rather than "archaeological site". One vendor (who is a qualified Mesopotamian archaeologist with a degree from The Institute of Archaeology, UCL in London - like me) claims the object they are selling is from a "Danish collection" which he however does not name nor say how long it was in that collection, the other offers no provenance data whatsoever. This is despite the fact that both of them will be aware that there is no real evidence that these objects left Egypt more than a short time ago. If they have evidence to the contrary, it is notable that they do not mention it in their sales offer. Why not? The ADA is unlikely to take action over this since its code of conduct is so fluffily phrased that it means next to nothing in cases like the one postulated here.

What about the collectors who have themselves decided these objects are a fresh find? Does anyone on the ancient artifacts forum suggest that it is in any way unethical to buy these items? (No). Does anyone point out that the information from the dealers who are selling this stuff could be used to trace back the trail of where they are coming from and maybe punish those responsible for the looting of this ancient gentlman's tomb and smuggling the items out of Egypt? (No). Do they think if we can find out where these items came from and what else was found in the tomb we may yet be able to salvage some archaeological informations? (No). All they are interested in is reading the hierolyphics and having the ushabtis in their scattered ephemeral personal collections in their homes. The fact that yet another unique archaeological context seems to have been trashed in recent months so they can play Champollions and have their living room mini-museums seems not to particularly worry them. I am sure the looters are happy too that the collectors and dealers are not too bothered and not asking too many questions, I bet they are out there now looking for more archaeological objects (shiny bits of faience, some brightly coloured cartonage pieces, some mysterious pieces of papyrus) to dig up and flog off to no-questions-asked dealers and collectors.

The collectors here must share the blame for the looting when we all know that there ARE on the market shabti figures - Niek de Haan has some in his collection - with good licit provenances which could be bought instead of this apparently dodgy material. Where are the ethics of collecting?

UPDATE 8th Feb.
Collector Cedric P. has been trying to get to the bottom of where the shabtis he bought came from (a bit late now after he's bought them one would have thought). He reports:

it seems that most of them are now comming from an English dealer who has hundreds of them. I asked dealers in Spain England USA and Italy, they all say that they came in the first place from England. for exemple this is the answer i receved this morning from a Spanish dealer about the wenneb shabtis."I
get all my antique items from a specialist dealer in the UK.
This means that they are purchased within Europe with no restrictions."But no one accept to give me the name of this dealer.

Well, this is interesting. Even though they are being sold abroad as "from a Dutch collection" and an English dealer is saying they are from a "Danish collection", there is an (unnamed) English dealer who apparently has a whole group of them. I wonder where he says they are from?

If their origin was all legitimate and above board one might wonder why that dealer is not - as far as I can see - openly advertising "I have several hundred of these legitimately exported items" to the collector. Instead (from what is being said on the forums) it seems they are contacting other dealers behind scenes "pssst... do you want to buy one of these?" and selling them cheaper than the price they eventually reach on the open market. What does that suggest?

Photo, from Bron Lipkin's former sales offer.