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Culture Without Context
Issue 11,
Autumn 2002
Egyptian action
Explosion in Philippines
Cambodian up-date
Greek illicit antiquities
Crisis in Ukraine
Irish metal detecting
Princeton return
The Queen’s head
Laws and Conventions
US concerns
Iranian antiquities
British Museum theft
Nepalese Buddha in Austria
Indian arrests
Iraqi salvage
Afghanistan issues
Pakistan issues
Sudanese mummy
US collectors' support group
Local action in Sri Lanka
Looting in the United Kingdom
British court decision
Chinese return
Mexican recovery
Tales from Italy
Israeli arrest
Ossuary controversy |
- In May, Egyptian authorities recovered a statue of Amenhotep III from a collector in The
Hague, Netherlands. The piece was one of 55 stolen from a Luxor temple storeroom in 1987
and was identified to Dutch police with the help of the Art Loss Register. It is now in
the Egyptian Museum, Cairo and will be displayed in December. Egyptian authorities are
chasing another piece from the raid, which is now in Switzerland.
- June: Egyptian customs officers intercepted 34 boxes containing 424 Pharaonic, Islamic,
Roman and Greek antiquities mixed with modern replicas in an airport storage area. The
shipment was destined for Madrid, Spain.
- In June, following notification from US Customs officials, Christie’s New York
withdrew from sale a piece of granite relief, 15 inches high and depicting Pharaoh
Nectanebo II (sale estimate $7000–9000). French Egyptologist, Christine Favard Meeks
recognized it from a wall at Behbeit el-Hagar temple in the Nile Delta and informed the
Egyptian Ministry of Culture. The fragment had been stolen about 12 years ago. Meeks, who
has documented the temple since 1977 says that in 1993 it was intact, but there has been
systematic looting since then. She claims to have recognized three other pieces from the
temple which have passed through major auctions.
A fragment of relief depicting the Nile god Hapi, also from Behbeit el-Hagar and
legally recorded as stolen in Egypt since 1990, was recognized recently in the collection
of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The sculpture has been in the USA at least since 1944
and was acquired by VMFA in 1963. Egypt has demanded its return, threatening a law suit.
- Dr Zahi Hawass, new head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), Egypt, has been
publicizing plans to take the fight against tomb robbing and smuggling to new levels
(Business Today, September 2002):
- On taking up his appointment he wrote to every museum and university in the world
stating the SCA will never co-operate with anyone who buys stolen artefacts.
- Two archaeologists (one American, one British) involved in the legal defence of
Frederick Schultz on charges of conspiring to receive stolen Egyptian antiquities (see In
The News, CWC, issues
9 &
10), have been permanently banned from working in Egypt.
- A special investigative team has been formed to identify illicit Egyptian antiquities in
museum collections, auction catalogues and sales on the Internet.
- A sweep of private dealers’ Egyptian storerooms resulted in the seizure of objects
discovered since 1983 (when laws were passed making new finds government property).
- Hawass emphasizes that, whereas in years past Egypt’s attitude toward the expensive
process of recovering stolen cultural heritage could be dismissed as ‘just media
talk’, now they are taking action.
- The SCA is working to improve site and museum security systems and preparing complete
documentation of items in storage, museums and tombs.
- A travelling exhibition Quest for Immortality: Treasure of Ancient Egypt is touring the
USA to raise an estimated $13 million for the campaign and other preservation work.
- A system which would allow foreign museums to ‘lease’ ancient artefacts for
display, possibly under better conditions than are presently available in Egypt, is being
investigated. It has been suggested that schemes like this, which allow museums in market
countries legitimately to display fresh, high-quality Egyptian antiquities, may also
reduce black market demand.
- July: Egyptian officials went to Washington DC to collect 2 Roman mummy masks which had
been confiscated by US police from the home of an arms dealer in Florida.
- July: An Egyptian delegation will be sent to Heathrow Airport to examine more than 2000
Egyptian antiquities found in the possession of an Egyptian resident in London who claimed
he had inherited them from his father in 1955
 Explosion in Philippines
Filipino police said that a man injured when a stick of dynamite exploded
in his Manila hotel room in May claimed to be a treasure hunter. Michael Meiring of
California showed police several documents, including maps of shipwrecks. His secretary,
however, claimed Meiring was a cancer specialist planning to create a clinic for
poverty-stricken cancer patients.
Cambodian up-date
Officials from the newly-rebuilt National Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia,
argue that one of Cambodia’s most effective weapons against theft of cultural
property is the Cambodian people’s sincere respect for their cultural heritage. It is
estimated that 50–100 people a year now take chance finds to the museum, which
curators suggest is extraordinary given how poor most of the finders are and the
potentially large amounts of money to be made were the items sold to illicit traders.
A statue of a ninth-century male divinity, voluntarily returned to
Cambodia by a private collector from Washington DC, has been revealed on expert
examination to be an elaborate forgery.
In April The Honolulu Academy of Arts returned to Cambodia two ancient
sculptures (a ninth-century, 15-inch-high stone head of Shiva, and a twelfth-century,
19-inch-high head of a demon) stolen from the temple of Angkor Wat in the 1970s and
subsequently donated to the institution. The pieces were identified following the 1996
publication Looting in Angkor by ICOM (International Council of Museums).
Greek illicit antiquities
Interpol reports that of 141 art-theft cases reported in Greece in 1999,
27 were from archaeological sites although real figures are difficult to gauge since
thefts often remain undiscovered until material appears on the official art market.
The Greek anti-Antiquities Smuggling squad announced that from
1999–2001 they recorded 101 law violations, involving 142 Greek nationals and 8
foreigners. 2014 archaeological artefacts, 157 Byzantine icons and 3367 coins were logged.
Cases of antiquities smuggling, having risen only slightly in the 1990s,
have increased considerably in the last 3 years because of a building boom and intensified
police action.
Kathimerini (10 October 2002) reports that there are no more
than 65 legally-designated collectors in the whole of Greece, compared to another 800
antiquities owners. According to Greek law owners are people who have inherited certain
objects, but are not permitted to acquire more. Licenced collectors on the other hand own
collections whose intrinsic interest has been recorded. They are entitled to add to their
collections and are under no obligation to reveal the source of their purchases.
In June the Greek Parliament passed a new antiquities law according to
which anyone possessing objects dating prior to 1453 must declare them to authorities
within 12 months of the law’s publication and may then be permitted to keep them.
In April, Athanassios Frangos, a municipal employee from Evia, Greece
was arrested trying to sell two Hellenistic statues and a fifth-century bc golden figure
of a goat. 45 coins were also seized.
August: Three jewellers in the Plaka area of Athens and one from the
south of the city, were arrested and charged with illegal possession and sale of
antiquities when 74 pieces of jewellery incorporating ancient coins were discovered in
their shops. 417 small-denomination ancient copper coins from Macedonia were later found
by police in a jewellery workshop.
Crisis
in Ukraine
Professor Vikto Myts, of the Crimean Institute for Archaeology in
Simferopol says that criminal gangs can actually be seen watching and waiting for
excavation teams to pack up for the night before they move in to strip sites of valuable
Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Bronze Age artefacts. • In a parallel development
Ukraine’s powerful mafia now employ archaeologists to work directly for them,
illegally excavating sites with the aid of mechanical diggers, floodlights and armed
guards to ward off police, other gangs and concerned academics.
Half a square-mile of the Hellenic city of Olvia was recently looted out
by thieves.
In most cases, the few tomb robbers who reach the courts receive only a
suspended sentence.
Prized artefacts — gold, statuettes, decorated pottery and Hellenic
period vases — are snapped up at the Sevastopol flea market for immediate transfer to
Moscow where they will fetch bigger sums and then be smuggled abroad.
Philippe Coumarianos (Kathimerini, 16 August 2002) describes an outing
with Volodya, leader of a gang of tomb robbers in the Ukraine, who work on commission from
wealthy dealers. During the night:
A stone slab, 3 metres undergound, is shattered with a steel bar to
allow access to an ancient tomb.
The remains of the woman buried within are raked over to recover a few
pieces of bronze artefacts, some paste-glass beads, and some red terracotta jars.
Volodya reveals that during previous nights the team have looted 12
burial sites only to recover a quantity of clay pottery not worth much on the black
market.
Irish metal detecting
In August Anthony Molloy and his son Kevin pleaded guilty to charges of
illegal possession of archaeological objects found in Ireland. Judge Michael Reilly, of
Birr District Court heard that Molloy used his retirement present, a metal detector, to
help him raid sites in north Tipperary and pointed out that as he had been employed by the
national heritage service as wildlife ranger he knew where archaeological sites were
located. Nearly 800 artefacts, including two Bronze Age daggers, an Iron Age pin, bronze
sword handle and hundreds of perfectly preserved coins, were found at the defendant’s
home by officers from the Art and Antiques Unit of the National Bureau of Criminal
Investigations and handed over to the National Museum. Irish law, updated in the 1990s to
counter wide-spread illegal treasure hunting, requires that finders must notify
authorities of finds within 96 hours or risk fines and prison time.
Princeton return
A fragment of the pediment from a Roman funerary monument, with a Latin
inscription and high-relief bust of a deceased man named Aphtonetus, bought by the
Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) in 1985, but subsequently discovered to have been
illegally exported, was voluntarily returned to Italy. During the course of his research,
museum curator Michael Padget came across references to the same piece, indicating that it
had been found during agricultural land clearing in Colle Tasso, near Tibur in
1981–82 and fully documented. Italian archaeologists and police then carried out
their own investigations and also reached the conclusion in March 2002 that the object had
indeed moved out of Italy without an export permit. PUAM has applied to Italy for a
long-term loan in order to continue display and study of the artefact. No action is
expected to be taken against the New York dealer who, the museum believes, acted in good
faith.
The
Queen’s head
A Benin bronze head in the collection of Queen Elizabeth II, previously
believed to be a modern replica, was identified as an original which had been illegally
brought out of Nigeria when it went on public display for the first time this summer. The
bronze had been illegally removed from the National Museum in Lagos in 1973 by president
General Yakubu Gowon and presented to the Queen as a present during a State visit. The
General had apparently been disappointed with a replica head he had commissioned and so
decided to choose a genuine antiquity from the National collection. According to The Art
Newspaper (September 2002) then Director of Antiquities, Dr Ekpo Eyo, was horrified by the
legal and ethical implications of a head of state raiding the National Museum.
Laws and Conventions
Japan has ratified the 1970 UNESCO Convention and it will enter into
force there on 9 December 2002.
Belgian senator François Roelants du Vivier has introduced a bill to
the Belgian Parliament to amend Belgian judiciary Code with regard to receipt of stolen
goods, which he considers weak compared to that of neighbouring countries. He also
emphasized that the country’s failure to ratify the 1970 UNESCO Convention harms
Belgium’s international image, while Parliament has not yet even addressed the
question of the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention.
In April, a draft law was circulated at the National People’s
Congress (NPC) of China proposing that private trading in antiquities be legalized (at
present only State-owned shops and auction house are permitted to sell art and antiques
and foreigners are prohibited from buying antiquities more than 200 years old). The
NPC’s legal committee commented that there are 160 auction houses in China adding
that many sell fakes and ‘encourage tomb robbing’ (the Art Newspaper September
2002). The draft law would also tighten government control by defining types of art that
cannot be traded, requiring ‘certification’ by central authorities of any art
traders, and offering the State first refusal on any object.
October: Sweden’s Culture Minister Maria Ulvskog announced that the
country had decided to sign the 1970 UNESCO Convention.
UNESCO’s Director General, Koïchiro Matsuura, congratulating Japan
on its recent ratification of the 1970 UNESCO Convention and emphasizing the importance of
market countries becoming party to the convention, called for universal ratification.
US concerns
Summer fires in the Sespe Wilderness area of the Los Padres National
Forest, California have caused archaeologists, park rangers and law enforcement officials
to step up patrols and education programs warning campers and hikers against looting.
Looters see such fires as a great opportunity, since archaeological artefacts like ancient
stone tools, arrowheads and pottery, usually hidden by vegetation, surface in the ash. A
task force of federal, state and local law enforcement officials looked into new
strategies for catching looters, including possible installation of sensors at certain
sites.
Archaeologists in Texas say that plundering of Native American graves
for Caddo pottery (which can realize thousands of dollars per piece on the market) has
reached frenzied proportions in the past two decades. Following a recent visit to two
Caddo cemeteries it was noted that there were acres of open grave pits as far as the eye
could see, with at least 250 burials looted. Every known Caddo cemetery around Lake
O’The Pines has now been looted and Cam Joy Mound, completely intact in 1989, has a
3-metre-wide looter’s trench through its centre. A Texas historic preservation
officer reports that one looter of Caddo graves boasts that he sent his kids to college
with the money raised selling finds, but only one documented case of prosecution is known.
21 Caddo pots stolen from the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory remain missing
despite the offer of a $10,000 reward (see In The News, CWC,
issue 9).
Officials of the Kolomoki Mounds State Historic Park, Georgia, have
launched a WWW site to further publicize details of archaeological artefacts stolen from
their museum during a night time raid in march 1974. 129 items — everything that was
on display — were stolen, including impressive clay vessels and figurines, but only a
handful have since been recovered: 12 in 1978 from the home of an unwitting private
collector in Miami, Florida (bought from a Tallahassee dealer); 1 in 1979 from artefact
sale in Pennsylvania; and 2 in 1996, which were identified from photographs and recovered
from a St Petersburg collector whose mother had bought them, still with museum numbers
intact, from a flea market at Gulfport. Art collectors and museums, in particular, are
being asked to check the WWW site to see if they can shed any light on the whereabouts of
the bulk of the material. For further information see http://www.georgiaplanning.com/history/kolomoki/.
The Christian Science Monitor (20 June 2002), reporting on widespread
archaeological looting in New Mexico, USA, argues that the US government is taking an
increasingly diligent and tough line against pot hunters, and that members of the public
are better informed and more willing to report suspicious activity. They recount a court
case settled in August 2001, now on appeal, in which two brothers were charged and
convicted of stealing Mimbres painted pottery from Gila National Forest. They were caught,
when they returned to a site in a remote area of the forest, by US Forest officials who
staked-out the site after a walker reported freshly dug holes.
Iranian antiquities
An Achaemenid gold tablet stolen from Iran’s National Museum is
still missing. The tablet, discovered during an American archaeological expedition to
Persepolis in 1933, disappeared along with a silver tablet (since recovered) in confused
circumstances — it was transferred to the Museum following the 1979 revolution, yet
never registered. A man was arrested, tried and jailed in connection with the theft.
A report in The International Herald Tribune/The Asahi Shimbun (May), in
which a museum official was quoted as saying that parts of 19 Buddhist statues were
discovered in ruins in Fars Province, Iran (raising the possibly that Buddhism existed
west of Afghanistan much earlier than had been believed), has caused controversy. A
representative of the Cultural Heritage Department of Tehran, having reviewed records from
the Iranian National Archaeological Museum, said the statues were in fact smuggled from
Afghanistan before the 1979 Islamic revolution and had been in storage since because of a
religious ban on idolatry. The smugglers had been arrested and the statues taken to a
museum in Shiraz and then to the Iranian National Archaeological Museum in Tehran.
British
Museum theft
A small ancient Greek marble head, with a distinctively damaged nose and
face and an estimated value of £25,000, was stolen from the Greek Archaic Gallery of the
British Museum on 30 July 2002. The gallery was unguarded due to staff shortages. New
director, Neil MacGregor, announced that his first priority will be an energetic review of
every aspect of security.
Nepalese Buddha in Austria
An ancient Dipankar Buddha, stolen from Nag Bahal, Patan, Nepal early in
2002, turned up for sale at established, Cologne-based, Gallery Peter Hardt in May. It was
recognized by museum curator Christian Schicklgruber when offered for sale to the
Ethnographic Museum in Vienna for $180,000. Schicklgruber worked quickly with contacts at
the University of Vienna and the Nagarjuna Institute in Kathmandu to identify the piece
and convince the Austrian public prosecutor to seize it as suspected stolen property.
Austrian and German police are working with Nepalese authorities to begin legal
proceedings to force the dealer to reveal how he obtained the piece and attempt to secure
its return to Nepal, although under Austrian law this may prove difficult as it may have
been bought in good faith. According to Nepal News, Gallery Peter Hardt, which had printed
a picture of the Dipankar in its catalogue, removed all images of Nepalese artefacts from
its WWW site and reportedly said: ‘I’d rather not take this matter to Kathmandu,
it will stir a hornet’s nest.’ The Kathmandu Post (8 June 2002) quotes an
anonymous writer, in a letter addressed to a Buddhist scholar, as saying that the figure
was ‘exported "legally" with all the seals from the National Archives’
though Nepalese law forbids export of any cultural objects over 100 years old. Two other
Buddha figures have been stolen from guthis in Patan in recent years, but not yet
surfaced.
Indian arrests
June: Acting on a tip-off, police in Jhabua, India arrested three people,
Gurudayal Singh, Pritam Singh and Nanak Singh in possession of four statues stolen from
the Jain temple of Bangh in nearby Dhar district on 9 March 2002. One of the idols, made
of ‘ashtadhatu’ and weighing 1.15 kg is believed to be 700 years old, and
archaeologists have been called in to ascertain its historical importance.Iraqi
salvage
"Iraqi salvage"
• Robert K. Englund, principal
investigator on the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative at the University of Los Angeles,
says that many of the cuneiform-inscribed objects currently flooding the market,
especially Internet auctions where they often sell for less than $10, are probably
authentic. He believes much of the material is the result of illicit excavations since
1990. The project aims to capture digital images of these potentially important objects,
sometimes directly from Internet pages, before they disappear into private
collections.• August: 1000 archaeological artefacts, including gold jewellery,
pottery, coins and statues, looted during the Gulf War, were returned to Iraq via Interpol
from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Britain.• Two pieces of stone relief stolen from Iraq,
which surfaced in antiquities shops in London, were returned in May, via the Iraqi
Interests Section. One, stolen from the Northern city of Hatra, showed the face of a young
woman with four snakes around her neck, the other had been taken from the palace of
Assyrian King Sennacherib at Nineveh.
Afghanistan issues
In May two Afghan men were intercepted by Pakistani police at border
barricades with 38 illicit antiquities. The pieces, mostly belonging to the Mehrgarh
culture of Baluchistan, were wrapped in newspaper and hidden in cavities in the men’s
car. They were to be delivered to a middleman in Rawalpindi for onward smuggling abroad.
Afghanistan’s Director of Archaeology Abdul Wasay Ferozi said the
recent arrests of several smugglers have done little to curb widespread looting since the
fall of the harsh Taliban regime. He adds that prominent regional warlords are part of the
problem: in the western district of Paghman alone some five areas have been illegally dug
by commanders with trucks, equipment and guns.
Afghanistan’s Interior Department told CNN (7 August 2002) that
twelve Pakistanis and Arabs killed during a gun battle near a military base near Kabul,
were not al-Qaeda operatives as the Defence Department claimed but were in fact would-be
looters planning to steal ancient sculptures from a nearby hill. An Interior Department
official claimed two guards were also killed in the incident.
Rory Stewart, reporting on his journey across Afghanistan for the New
York Times magazine (25 August 2002) describes his meetings with local warlords plundering
ancient ruins for objects to sell.
One, now director of a society funded by foreigners and set up to
protect the early Islamic tower of Jam, explained how he had dug up quite a lot of
antiquities from all over the area and sold them to dealers from Herat.
Stewart witnessed the rapid and widespread pillage of the site, with
villagers tunnelling trenches up to 10 feet deep everywhere, and destroying all trace of
the previously unknown ancient city in the process.
Artefacts are apparently in demand from dealers and collectors in Japan,
Britain and the USA (where they are described as Seljuk or Persian to obscure their Afghan
origin) with reports of American servicemen buying directly from villagers.
Looters say that there are charred roof beams in most of the ancient
buildings, leading Stewart to surmise they may have discovered and now largely destroyed
the city of the Turquoise Mountain, burned by Genghis Khan.
Prices paid by dealers range from $1–2 for a twelfth-century ewer,
or rather more for carved wooden doors or ivory chess pieces.
Gul Agha Karimi, Chairman for the Society for the Protection of the
Minaret of Jam (now a World Heritage Site), said the looting is a disaster and has come
about since the breakdown of law and order following the fall of the Taliban. He believes
that the area is too dangerous for archaeologists, even with security guards, and the
United Nations do not have contacts with the local knowledge necessary to deal with such a
situation.
En-route from Jam to Kabul, in almost every village locals were
ransacking ancient graves for identical, highly stylized female heads.
Pakistan issues
Archaeologist Zainul Wahab has expressed concern at the number of
looters damaging sites in NWFP (North West Frontier Province), Pakistan. He fears that
illegal excavation of thousands of Gandharan, Greek-Bactrian, Hindu Shahi and early Muslim
period sites, particularly by criminals searching for coins up to six feet below surface
levels with the aid of sophisticated metal-detecting equipment, is irreparably damaging
archaeology and knowledge of history of the area. He added that millions of such coins
from diverse periods are appearing on both local and international markets.
Looting of the Kashmir Smast cave, in the Babozai mountains, Mardan
district, Pakistan has been going on for a year, with looters reportedly removing rare
Gandharan antiquities including a bronze Bodhisatwa statue (possibly sold to a foreign
dealer for Rs 2.8, according to Dawn 29 May 2002) and White Huns coins, even in the
presence of officials.
Sudanese mummy
Two antiquities smugglers in Sudan were arrested, in an undercover police
operation, trying to sell the country’s first fully-preserved mummy for $586,000.
Police had been staking out the men since their arrival in Khartoum to find buyers for the
mummy, which they had discovered in its grave at the royal cemetery of Napata. Siddeek
Mohammed Gism al-Seed of the Sudanese Museum said the mummified body, fantastically
well-preserved owing to extremely skilled mummification and burial in desiccating desert
sands, was a member of the family of Pharoah Taharka of the Cush Dynasty.
US
collectors’ support group
Ashton Hawkins, formerly executive vice-president and Counsel to the
Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, has created a support group of
American collectors and at least five institutions who believe their collecting practices
to be threatened and see themselves under siege from over-zealous law enforcement and
public debate they perceive to be dominated by archaeologists’ concerns.
The ‘American Council for Cultural Policy’ is operating from
the midtown offices of law firm Gersten, Savage & Kaplowitz where Ashton is now
employed.
The Art Newspaper (November 2002) reports that the first meeting of the
45-person Board of Advisors on 9 October 2002 (held in the Fifth Avenue home of Uzbek
textile collector Guido Goldman) was attended by Shelby White, former Getty curator Arthur
Houghton (a vice-president), former Kimbell Art Museum director Edmund Pillsbury and legal
scholar Professor John Merryman.
The group’s stated aims are to lobby for revision of the Cultural
Property Implementation Act and how it is applied (see In The News, CWC,
7 & 8), and
discourage use of the 1977 US v McClain decision which upheld the use of the National
Stolen Property act in relation to foreign stolen material and was cited as a precedent in
the recent trial of dealer Frederick Schultz (see In The News, CWC issues
9 & 10). The
Council is supporting Schultz’s appeal against his recent conviction.
The Council sees the US Customs Service as a problem, arguing that they
form part of an over-reaching and political law enforcement. Many collectors believe
Customs has become tougher on antiquities collectors in return for closer Italian
co-operation on illegal drugs control.
In the long term the Council hopes to publish a guide for collectors
called Collecting Cultural Property: Principles, Positions and Guidelines describing legal
case studies, legislation and government directives.
The Council argues that legitimate dispersal of material through the
market is one of the best ways to protect cultural heritage.° The group says the State
Department is beginning to listen to them.
The Council wants to encourage the Association of Art Museums to take a
more focused position in response to curbs on importation of Italian cultural material,
which they see as a direct threat.Hawkins further argues for a scheme (first suggested by
the Metropolitan Museum in 1975) which would have the Egyptian Museum, Cairo offer museums
around the world up to 50 objects from Egyptian collections in return for ‘very
substantial’ contributions (perhaps $1 million) towards the construction of a new
museum under the Giza plateau.
Local
action in Sri Lanka
Villagers in the Sri Lankan town of Balangoda grabbed 20 suspected
treasure hunters digging for artefacts at a local archaeological site and tied them to
trees while they called the authorities. It is not known whether the group, which included
a senior policeman, will be charged.
Looting in the United Kingdom
Yeavering Bell, one of the UK’s most important Iron Age hill forts
has been seriously damaged by illegal metal detectorists, who have dug at least 34 holes
into a secluded part of the site, since a public access agreement was negotiated by
Northumberland National Park. Archaeologist Dr Rob Young, and landowner Lord Anthony Hill
expressed concerns that looting had never occurred in the National Park on such a scale
before and potentially brings the large numbers of responsible metal detectorists into
disrepute, while damaging relations with landowners. Under British Law illegal digging on
a scheduled ancient moment carries a penalty of two years’ jail or an unlimited fine.
Archaeologists in the north of England fear more than 150 Roman objects,
including coins, glassware, jewellery, shoulder plates and a Viking bone comb, may have
been stolen from six boxes in a Carlisle council storage building and sold via the
Internet. Archaeologists said some of the items were extremely rare. The matter is
currently under police investigation, and some of the artefacts have been recovered from
various research offices. The items were found on the site of the Millennium Gallery by
the Roman fort of Luguvallium near Hadrian’s wall.
British court decision
A British court ruled on 16 October 2002 that a 200 bc bronze statue of
Dionysos should be returned via diplomatic courier to Turkey. Originally confiscated from
a bonded warehouse in Switzerland, the statue was sent to Britain where it was stored free
of charge by the British Museum while it was the subject of complicated legal proceedings.
It was listed as an asset of Turk Nevzat Telliagoglu, who was subject of an Order of the
High Court of Justice made under the Drug Trafficking Act. Sara Dayman of BDO Stoy Hayward
was appointed Receiver and claimed the statue while the company looked into its true
ownership history. The Receivers advertised in several publications for claimants and took
advice from experts (who could not say conclusively that the statue came from Turkey as
opposed to elsewhere in the Roman Empire). When the Turkish authorities were unable to
substantiate their claim a Request for legal Assistance was issued, but still contested by
the Receivers. Eventually the High Court of Justice accepted evidence put forward that the
statue had been purchased in Turkey, illegally exported and therefore remained Turkish
property.
Chinese return
A stone Buddha, one of four from a four-gate tower in Shentong Temple,
Licheng, Shandong Province, China, will be returned to the temple from Taiwan. The
sculpture was stolen from the site (which was designated as a protected monument by the
Chinese government in 1963) in 1997, smuggled off the mainland and purchased by a
collector in Taiwan who donated it to the Dharma Drum Mountain Cultural and Educational
Foundation in 2002. They investigated and established its authenticity and decided it
belonged in its true setting. The Straits Exchange Foundation will handle the return.
Mexican recovery
October: A pre-Columbian figurine reported as missing from an
archaeological site in Mexico since July, has been found in an Internet auction. The
ceramic statuette, described in the Yahoo sale as of ‘orange clay’, was from El
Tajin, Veracruz state and has been returned to the National Anthropology and History
Institute. Mariano Orturo Campos of Mexico City was arrested on charges of illegally
selling the object.
Tales
from Italy
A smuggling ring operating from the southern Italian port of Bari has
been discovered by Italian police who have charged 16 people, including shopkeepers who
allegedly sold illicit antiquities. With branches in five regions of both north and south
Italy, the ring dealt in religious art treasures and illegally excavated archaeological
material, some of which came from sites near Taranto in Puglia.
Rory Carroll, writing in The Guardian (4 May 2002) interviewed 66-year
old Italian tombarolo Antonio, who began illegal digging in his 20s and uses the money to
supplement his income as a house decorator. It emerged that:
Antonio estimates he has destroyed more than 2200 tombs over the years.
That he prefers Etruscan tombs which are shallower than Roman, so
apparently easier to ransack.
That he believes modern tomb robbers have ‘no patience, no
finesse’ and destroy much material when they open a tomb.
Israeli arrest
May: The Israel Antiquities Authority’s Theft Prevention Unit caught
a man, from the nearby area of Silwan, with a metal detector digging for ancient coins on
Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Use of metal detectors is prohibited under Israeli law.
Ossuary controversy
A 2000-year-old stone ossuary, bearing on its lid the inscription
‘James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus’ in Aramaic, became a cause for
controversy when its existence in the collection of Tel Aviv engineer and prolific
antiquities collector Oded Golan was revealed. The box, which has been shipped to Toronto,
Canada for temporary display at the Royal Ontario Museum, is believed by the Israel
Antiquities Authority’s Theft Prevention Unit to be the result of a tomb robbery,
possibly in Jerusalem. Amin Gamor, head of the anti-theft division, recounts rumours that
the ossuary was on sale as recently as a year ago, but the reclusive Golan has publicly
asserted that he bought it at least 25 years ago for a few hundred dollars from a
Jerusalem dealer, whose name and location he cannot now remember. (The year of purchase is
crucial as since the Antiquities Law of 1978 such objects would rightfully be State
property.) Meanwhile, scholars are divided as to the authenticity and possible Biblical
significance of the inscription, which will be difficult, if not impossible, to establish
with no information about the object’s context or provenance.
Sources
Al-Ahram, Ananova, Antiques Trade Gazette, The Art Newspaper, Asahi.com,
Associated Press, Athens News, Atlanta Journal Constitution, BBC News, BDO Stoy Hayward,
Business Today, The Cambodia Daily, Canoe news, China Post, The Christian Science Monitor,
CNN.com, Daily Princetonian News, The Daily Star, Lebanon, The Daily Telegraph, Dawn,
Egyptian State Information Service, The Guardian, Houston Chronicle, The International
News (Daily Jang), Internet Jerusalem Post, IRNA, Kathimerini, The Kathmandu Post, Mail on
Sunday, museum security net, Nepal News, New York Times, Newcastle Evening Chronicle,
Newsweek, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Reuters, Salon.com, Scotsman on Sunday, The Times,
The Times of India, Toronto Star, Turkish press, Wall Street Journal, Xinhuanet
First posted June 2003; Page
design updated September 2006 |
