Egypt: A Dearth of News on Looting, Has it Stopped?

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There seems to be a slow-up in the news coming out of Egypt on the looting of sites, does this mean it has stopped? Or does it mean that now there are new "guns and guards protecting Egypt's sites" its not really politic to admit that its still going on? Or are we not hearing about it because it is no longer hot news?

It may well be that the looting of storerooms has come to a stop for the moment, but this should not blind us to the fact that somewhere out there are an uncounted number of items already stolen from them. Not much has been said about whether any inventories of the stolen items will be made available, when and in what form - or whether they even exist for some of the places attacked.

What about the open sites? We heard of digging going on at a number of places in middle and lower Egypt (oddly very little from Upper Egypt) has this really stopped, or is it now not easy to see where fresh holes are, and/or it is no longer so newsworthy as it was when it started?

I hope Kate Phizackerley continues to update her Looting database, quite apart from its value as a historical document (efforts of the Egyptological community to gather information despite the fact that attempts were made to withhold, steer and block it by the Egyptian authorities), it is a useful resource for keeping this problem in the public eye. If people come across fresh reports of looting, please forward them to the database.


Egyptological Looting Database 2011: A Site by Site Database of the Damage to Antiquites in Egypt on http://egyptopaedia.com/2011/, run by Kate Phitzackerley

Looted Art, the never-ending story

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Josh Rothman in the Boston Globe summarises a recent article ('Art in the Time of War') by British historian Richard J. Evans in The National Interest on the looting and destruction of art down through the ages from late antiquity through Napoleon and the Nazis, up to modern Iraq and Egypt. Twentieth -century warfare has led to the wholesale destruction of cities and the collections they contained by bombing and shelling.

The Nazis looted art on a massive scale never before seen in history, and squabbled among themselves over the gems of Europe's museums and private collections. There was so much stolen art that it was often treated carelessly -- the German governor of occupied Poland, Hans Frank, had to be reprimanded by a Nazi art historian "for hanging a painting by Leonardo da Vinci above a radiator". A surprisingly large amount of the art displaced by the World Wars has been returned, not necessarily to its owners, but at least to its country of origin.

Evans notes, the looting and destruction of art continues with every new conflict, as we saw in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, with its shocking images of the looting and destruction of the museum and library collections there. He quotes the journalist Robert Fisk, who wrote, in his forward to The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq:

I was among the first to enter the looted Baghdad archaeological museum, crunching my way through piles of smashed Babylonian pots and broken Greek statues. I watched the Islamic library of Baghdad consumed by fire -- 14th and 15th century Korans embraced by flames so bright that it hurt my eyes to look into the inferno. And I have spent days trudging through the looters’ pits and tunnels of Samaria, vast cities dug up, their precious remains smashed open -- thousands upon thousands of magnificent clay jars, their necks as graceful as a heron’s, all broken open for gold or hurled to one side as the hunters burrowed ever deeper for ever older treasures.

The looting of art continues apace; if it's no longer motivated by nationalist fervor, it's still driven by personal greed. By 2005, four thousand of the 15,000 artworks looted from the Baghdad Museum in 2003 had been found. A thousand were found in the United States, and 600 in Italy. Many of them, Evans writes, were "pillaged by order from private collectors and their agents".

Of course antiquity collectors and their "agents" (antiquity dealers) bend over backwards to deny that they are in any way responsible for the existence of an antiquities market. It stands to reason that all those Mesopotamian bits of carved stone and impressed clay tablets cannot be selling themselves.

Lecture by Dr Tarek El Awady at Ministry of Antiquities

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There was apparently a lecture yesterday (21st April) by Dr Tarek El Awady Manager of the Egyptian Museum at the Ministry of Antiquities (Ahmed Pacha Kamel Hall, 3 Adel Abu Bakr St.) titled 'The Egyptian Museum through January's Revolution'. It was scheduled to start at four and go on to seven, so would have been quite thorough. I can see this blog is being read quite assiduously in Cairo, so would anyone who was there care to enlighten us what was said and presented? I wonder, did Dr El Awady abseil through the skylights of the building on telephone cables to show the audience how it was done? Did he explain why it took so long to produce a list of the objects missing from the smashed cases, and give a more believable version of how the recovered objects turned up?

UPDATE: After asking around I can find nobody who knows anybody who went. No mention of it on the Hawass blog or MSAA Facebook page. Was it cancelled?

A Voice of reason Among the US Coineys: First a Citizen, and also a Coiney

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Predictably self-appointed spokesman for all coin collectors, dugup dealer Dave Welsh, is attempting to host a discussion of the recent appeal court ruling over on his Unidroit-L coiney naysayer microforum. Interestingly the expected 'pitchfork and torches march on Washington' attitudes seem to have waned in the coiney community and Welsh's inflammatory posts on the topic has received just one reply so far. Maybe the milieu as a whole is waking up to the fact that they are not, after all, in the nineteenth century, and that coin collecting is functioning now in a totally different environment than it was a century or so ago.

The reply he got is interesting. Al Hickey writes that ACCG political rhetoric is not helpful to an understanding of the matters at issue in this case and seems to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of how the US government is organized and works and has become clouded by a loss of perspective. In particular the criticism of a court verdict in terms of what the government decrees fails to recognise the independence of the US judiciary of the executive branch of government (Hickey reminds coineys "There are three independent branches of government and under our Constitution they function each as to the others by well-known means within a system of checks and balances".) He goes on to remark that:

First, in the matter under consideration the government was merely one party to a civil action, an action in which each party stands equal before the law, and its position in the matter was understandable and reasonable. Second, by the very words of the Constitution (Art VI, Cl 2), our relations and agreements with foreign nations are among the most important functions of government. In that context, the administration's position and the court's ruling are both perfectly understandable. [...] As to the matter of import restrictions, I've said this before and will say it again, while I might personally lament the import restrictions, I do not believe that my love of ancient coins is more important than the many, many issues facing our country, including its standing and relations in the community of nations. Some seem to see the import restrictions as the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it, but I don't.

Let us be clear, these are import restrictions on coins illegally exported from other countries with which the US has a bilateral cultural property agreement.

Senator Schumer accepted ACCG award, but attempts to halt coin sales

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On January 30, 2007, the dealers' lobby group the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild awarded Senator "Do What Torturing You have To Do" Chuck Schumer (Democrats -New York) its Friend of Numismatics Award. Senator Schumer was involved in the questioning of the bilateral cultural property agreement with China on the grounds that coineys suspected there "may have been irregularities in how the State Department processed a Peoples Republic of China (sic) request involving a wide variety of cultural artifacts dating from Neolithic times to AD 1911".

Senator Schumer and Jeff Hamond of his staff hosted a meeting where the concerns of New Yorkers, including collectors and the small businesses of the numismatic trade, were raised directly with a high ranking State Department official.

Schumer and now Gillibrand (Democrats -New York). In receiving this award, Senator Schumer joined Senator Kit Bond of Missouri and Congressmen Green, Petri and Ryan from Wisconsin and others in accepting this token of appreciation from the ancient coin collecting community for their help and support for the no-questions-asked market in dugup antiquities.

Of course supporting US dealers selling dugups no-questions-asked is not a problem for Senator Schumer, he'll lend his name to that, no problems there about American people stealing the archaeological heritage from the brown-skinned guys abroad. He has no problems therefore with US collectors putting money into the pockets of culture criminals and organized criminal groups involved in antiquity smuggling to the US. But modern commemorative coins, now THERE is a problem worthy of his attention, there's something to fight for. Gotta stop collectors putting money into the pockets of small US businesses producing commemorative coins and medals. Obvious.

Egypt court jails officials over Museum theft

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CAIRO, April 21 (Reuters) Egypt court jails officials over Van Gogh theft

An Egyptian court on Thursday jailed five officials, including a former head of the state's fine arts department, over the theft of a Van Gogh painting worth an estimated $55 million, state media said. "Vase with Viscaria" was stolen in August from Cairo's Mahmoud Khalil museum, home to one of the Middle East's finest collections of 19th and 20th-century art. The state MENA news agency and court officials said the five had been found guilty of "causing the theft of the painting," without giving further details. The painting has not been recovered. A police investigation soon after the theft found that security measures at the museum were extremely lax, raising fears about the safety of the treasure trove of art and antiquities on display in Egypt. Legal sources said the court sentenced Mohsen Shaalan, who was head of the culture ministry's fine arts department, to one year in jail and ordered him to perform community service. Four other employees at the museum were given six-month prison terms, said the sources.

Hmm, meanwhile the museum officials just on the other side of the river that went home on 28th January when there was a full-scale riot going on just outside its gates, leaving three security men on duty all night, in a museum whose security cameras did not register anything, not only are not going to jail, but are still in their posts. Odd, that. I wonder if they've at least got the security cameras working again?

"No Justice" for ACCGyleaks?

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Like Bradley Manning, alleged leaker of State Department emails, coin dealer Wayne Sales thinks (Affirmation of Audacity):

the State Department wall of secrecy is a stain on government by the people and this challenge was long overdue.

Unlike Mr Manning, Sayles is not in jail for his challenge. But a feature linking both is the desire to release to public view emails which the State Department does not consider are for public view (Sayles warns that the case is: "not over quite yet") .

The coiney dealers' "Guilds" launched an appeal on a ruling judging that the Department of State has shown the coineys about as much as they have the legal right to be shown, Sayles concludes:

The result, unfortunately, is less than encouraging for those who would like to believe that America is still a land of freedom and justice. The U.S. Appellate Court had a chance to right a grievous wrong and failed to step up when the opportunity was presented.

Not a "land of freedom" for dealers to sell illegally exported dugup coins, it's not "just" is it Mr Sayles? He intimates that the U.S. Appellate Court "had a chance to right a grievous wrong" (sic) but instead applied the law and did not use any extra-legislative means to "step up when the opportunity was presented". I guess Judge Stephen F. Williams (an environmental law specialist no less) is not only impartial but does not collect dugup artefacts and coins and would not be interested in any illegally exported if a dealer offered him some.

Vignette: Judge Williams judging.