The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities is offering a reward of between LE5,000 and LE50,000 to any citizen responsible for stolen antiquities being returned to the State (The Egyptian Gazette Online, Egyptian stolen antiquities incentive, April 23, 2011). That's what it says, not apprehension of any more of the abseiling thieves and return of the objects.
Coin dealer Wayne Sayles explains to a list member on coin dealer Dave Welsh's coiney microforum Unidroit-L his views on stewardship of the archaeological heritage. The occasion for this was that member's questioning of the ACCG challenge to the US government over the import of illegally exported dugup artefacts. Sayles suggests: In my view, import restrictions are not the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it. The mentality that imposes import restrictions on any and all utilitarian objects simply because archaeologists want to be exclusive stewards over them IS potentially the beginning of the end.First of all nobody is planning "import restrictions on any and all utilitarian objects" bought fresh from the factory in Turin, just certain types of dugup and ethnographic collectables. This is because their production involves the depletion of a resource.
Coin dealer Wayne Sayles tells Al Hickey on the coiney Unidroit-L forum what the ACCG case is all about. Hickey had questioned why the ACCG wants to import illegally exported coins, I'd say that was a reasonable question... Sayles disagrees. The coin import restrictions are a very small part of a much larger issue. [...] there are a significant number of people engaged in the defense of similar issues and it is becoming a momentous reaction to what many view as oppression. [...] The point is that something is wrong in government and ACCG will challenge that with every tool available.Gotta fight the gub'nmint conspr'cy against the People. It seems to me that the coineys have fallen in behind a bitter and suspicious old man, willing to see an enemy around every corner.
This is sickening. I think there really are far more important things the US people should be taking their government to task over than whether emails of this or that person mention a secret agreement involving ancient dugup coins, or whatever it is the silly, self-interested and superficial US coineys are contesting. Yes, let's get those State Department secrets out in the open.
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?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:
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.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".
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?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.
n 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.
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?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.
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 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.
Iraq wants to conclude a new international agreement that will designate the dealing of antique Iraqi artifacts a crime, RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq reports. Iraqi officials said the goal is to preserve the country's heritage from thieves and smugglers. Baha al-Mayyah, an adviser at the Iraqi Tourism and Historic Monuments Ministry, told RFE/RL on April 18 that "Archaeological sites are still in danger of being looted and are subject to illegal excavations in many places." He said "the government is working on the possibility of concluding new international agreements that will designate dealing in ancient Iraqi artifacts a crime." [...] Al-Mayyah criticized the international community for not doing enough to deter smugglers and looters. He said Iraq wants to abolish the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property [...] Iraq plans to convene an international conference at the end of this year in Baghdad to discuss the creation of a new international organization. "Its task would be to push for the cancellation or the amendment of the 1970 convention," al-Mayyah said. "It would have as members all the countries of the world that are facing problems with the looting and smuggling of their heritage."This would be a very interesting move. It is quite clear that a convention discussed and written in the late 1960s cannot possibly be applied to the changed antiquities market (especially in its dominating no-questions-asked variant) that has developed since the mid 1970s and then was again completely transformed in the mid 1990s by internet trading. It is totally inadequate to the task. This is quite apart from the fact that the US, one of the largest potential markets for illicitly acquired, and exported dugup antiquities refuses to implement it properly but only in a form which is a "compromise" with their own huge and lucrative no-questions-asked antiquities trade. The time for new agreements and standards on the international trade of this sort of material was yesterday. Whether or not US antiquity dealers want it or not, it's time to do some serious thinking about this problem while there is still some of the archaeological resource in the ground left to save from commercial looting.
The sad saga of the legal challenge by coiney trade organizations the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild (ACCG), the International Association of Professional Numismatists (IAPN), and the Professional Numismatists Guild, Inc. PNG to US government restrictions on the import of illegally exported coins continues. Much to their shame, these groups (collectively known in the latest court document as the "Guilds") are fighting US implementation of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property and making a dreadful and expensive mess of it. At the same time they are showing the world as clearly as could be wished by their preservationist opponents, the basis of the no-questions-asked international trade in dugup antiquities such as coins.The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has affirmed in part and reversed in part the judgment of the U.S. District Court in the ACCG-IAPN-PNG FOIA case. The Court affirmed most of the withholdings, but reversed the District Court’s decision on one document, and also ordered a more thorough search for certain material. The Plaintiffs are reviewing the ruling to ascertain whether any further action on the appellate level is warranted.The court's verdict contains such appellate court legalese such as "The Guilds' evidence falls way short", "we need not worry about the implications of "limited" disclosure", but having ploughed through it, readers will discover that the implications of one document on which the court actually reversed the decision of the District Court leave a very bad taste in the mouth:
’This withholding involves various redactions from six separate emails exchanged between the late Danielle Parks, a professor of archeology who did field work in Cyprus, and Andrew Cohen, an employee of the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs. To justify their withholding, Ms. Grafeld said, "These emails contain some information that was provided in confidence by Danielle Parks, an individual in the private sector, to a staff member of ECA's Cultural Heritage Center in connection with the then-upcoming Committee meetings regarding potential extension of the bilateral cultural property agreement" with the government of Cyprus. [...] On remand, State may provide additional reasons for its belief that Parks provided information in confidence. But its explanation in the record before us is inadequate.The ACCG, IAPN and PNG are after private emails of a deceased person? Private emails? What are they going to do, seize her computer? How low can the coineys stoop? So it seems from this that Parks wrote to Cohen and there are internal hints in the mails that she expected this to be an exchange between her and Cohen, and the coineys received some of that information and want to see the whole of those emails? Why? What possible relevance can they have to their case, that ACCG, IAPN and PNG dealers in the US should not be prevented from importing coins illegally exported from Cyprus?
Nowhere does State explain whether it possesses email archives for Bureau employees other than the former staff member, whether there are backup tapes containing staff member emails and, if so, whether such backup tapes might contain emails no longer preserved on staff members' computers. It may well be that searching additional emails archives and backup tapes would be impossible, impractical, or futile [...] We also note that Ms. Grafeld states, after a 12-page review of what State had searched, "There are no other places that if searched would have a reasonable likelihood of containing additional responsive material." [...] given that the Guilds raised the issue of backup tapes before the district court, we think this a gap that State needed to fill in order to carry its burden as to the adequacy of its search. Specifically, under the circumstances it is reasonable to expect State to inform the court and plaintiffs whether backup tapes of any potential relevance exist; if so whether their responsive material is reasonably likely to add to that already delivered; and, if these questions are answered affirmatively, whether there is any practical obstacle to searching them.Apart, that is, from how much that is going to cost the US taxpayer so that coin dealers can fight for their "rights" to import illegally exported coins?
“The museum is clearly very valuable, and precious, to the Egyptian people,” said Fayza Haikal, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo. [...] “The museum was looted more than once, especially after 28 January and 11 February. Luckily, most of what was stolen was retrieved, and all that remains missing is a few smaller artifacts," Haikal said.
This is quite a disturbing article, and got me questioning a few assumptions we have all been making about the looting of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Some things were not making sense, still do not. We are not getting any reliable information from the Museum, or anyone else, and are struggling trying to make sense of what information we have been fed. Look at what Ali Abdel Mohsen writes here: Most Egyptians would agree that the 25 January revolution deserves a place in the Egyptian Museum — the most prominent and well-established museum in the country, and a fixture in Tahrir Square, the center of the protests. But allegations that the ruling armed forces used the museum building to incarcerate, violently interrogate, and abuse pro-democracy protesters has indelibly changed the site's history. Is the legacy of the Egyptian Museum, once the celebrated home of Egypt’s most prized ancient artifacts, now a “torture chamber”?The rest here: Ali Abdel Mohsen, 'Egypt's Museums: From Egyptian Museum to torture chamber', al Masry al Youm, Wed, 20/04/2011. As a Polish citizen (remember Martial law of 1981?) I could never really get my head around all the people I met over there (in February and March this year) being so joyful the army was in control. That is just crazy when you consider the links between the Mubarak regime ad the military, and the huge privileges the military has there - which of course it is naive in the extreme to think they are going to give up. Trouble ahead I fear.
Shortly after the military stepped in to fill the void left by the withdrawal of security forces, and to put a cap on the subsequent spiraling chaos, rumors began to spread that the armed forces were detaining and abusing Tahrir Square protesters within the walls of the Egyptian Museum, which, likely due to its proximity to the square and tight security, was being used as their makeshift command center. These accounts were particularly common during the most recent attempts by the armed forces to clear the square, when even young men and women attempting to assist soldiers found themselves captured and dragged off to the nearby museum. Eyewitnesses to these sudden and inexplicable arrests were quick to report what they had seen, and as the news spread, public pressure guaranteed the quick release of several museum detainees, who were then able to confirm what, until then, had only been a series of distressing rumors. “When the army began arresting people, we weren’t sure what was happening to them, or why they were being kept at the museum,” said journalist and political activist Rasha Azab. “We would go and protest these arrests outside the museum, without knowing what was happening inside.” Azab was herself arrested and detained in the museum on 9 March. “The armed forces took me to an area directly behind the main building, where the Chamber of Tourism is located,” she said, to an area she describes as “an improvised cell block.” Azab recalls the harsh tactics used against other detainees. “The men were being tortured with electric shocks, whips and wires,” she said. “The women were tied to fences and trees.” The earlier stages of this alarming phenomenon were marked by reports of “forced virginity tests” to which several female detainees said they were subjected.
How do you fancy spending Easter Saturday and Sunday in 80 acres of bean fields? Bean fields with a history? Centrally placed in England, never been searched before - except the time last Christmas when the artefact grabfest removed from the archaeological record lots of nice collectable and saleable finds including a nice couple of nicely enamelled Roman brooches, a nice votive axe and many more really nice bits. That's nice. In fact so nice that at the time of writing there are several nice archaeological trenches in an adjacent field. Apparently the site figures quite prominently in the Historic Environment Record which has nicely been made available for artefact hunters to take their pick. There was an archaeological survey here in the 1990s, "The Raunds Area Project”, so that's nice because it means artefact hunters will know precisely which areas to target. Which is nice. There's a nice big Bronze Age henge here, so maybe some nice votive metalwork in the offing, which will be nice. Then there is a nice Iron Age settlement here with roundhouses. So that means there'll be some more nice finds to hoik out. There's ring ditches visible on the aerial photographs, so you can even do a nice bit of grave-robbing if they are levelled barrows. That's nice, isn't it? The site is situated next to a nice old Roman track, so there's bound to be nice stuff that was dropped or lost there (or maybe "hoards hidden on the way to battle", eh?). This road was later used to link the deserted village of Mallows Cotton to the deserted village of West Cotton which then linked to Raunds or Rants as it was in the Doomsday Book. That's nice, because the bean fields run right up to the edge of one of those deserted medieval villages (but there will be archaeological material to be had beyond the edge) and they actually cover the site of West Cotton, so there will be nice crotal bells and other nice Medieval metalwork to dig out galore, lots of nice hammered coins too no doubt. In fact so nice Central Plunderers are having another commercial artefact grabfest in those beanfields on Saturday. Don't forget to pay them the sixty quid and bring your metal detector.
The Hawass bashers seem to have been aroused and are obviously going to stop at nothing to try and get rid of him. Here is the attempt of computer gamer "Ancient Glow" (sic): "Dr. Zahi Hawass, Fake Chamber Scandal" Dr. Zahi Hawass could be in trouble again, evidence has emerged that he has been lying to the Egyptian Public, and the world! [...], evidence has emerged that he may have staged a false project, live on T.V. to fool the people of Egypt, and the world!the Facebooker wannabes have latched onto it like a shot... So this "shaft", is there just the one in this pyramid then? Funny, I thought that was not the case, but then I am not a computer-gaming conspiracy theorist with a grudge...
The world is full of idiots it seems:Egyptian activists and media professionals launched a signature-gathering campaign to sue former Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass for “endangering Egyptian artifacts”. Haitham Yahia, an activist and blogger, posted a form on his Facebook and Twitter accounts for people wishing to join the campaign to sign. Yahia then plans to file a report with the attorney general against Hawass, [...] Yahia said Hawass allowed the illegal use of Egyptian artifacts for the promotion of a menswear fashion line that carries his name [...]. Photographer James Weber, who carried out the photoshoot, posted the pictures and an interview about them on his blog on 23 November last year. He said the crew was allowed into the King Tut exhibit in New York City on 7 October.wait... this is the New York exhibition centre (Discovery Times Square Exposition 226 W. 44th St. (between 7th and 8th Avenues), New York NY 10036) that Zahi Hawass runs? The extraterritorial New York exhibition centre where Egyptian law obtains in place of US law? What on earth is this about? A male model poses in a public museum gallery in New York. What is "illegal" about that? Many people pose daily for photographs standing in front of Egyptian sculptures and monuments, in Egypt and elsewhere. Do "activists" intend to accuse them too of “endangering Egyptian artifacts” and filing a report with the Egyptian attorney general about it?
‘while we are happy to welcome the arrival of a mass of shiny things, we are bound to lament the loss of an opportunity to understand what they mean [and] the paradox of the English system: the treasure hunters are applauded and rewarded, but the archaeologists are seemingly obliged to lurk in the shadows, anxious not to spoil the party’.He goes on to touch upon the manner in which this story was used in archaeological outreach:
‘it seems astonishing that the public presentation of the entire episode was dominated by the reward to an individual rather than the potential reward for this generation and the many to come, of the new history potentially on offer from a structured investigation’.The essay sets out the sort of project design of a structured investigation that should have been set up as a response to the reported find (2101, 232-5). He ends by pointing out that the valuing of knowledge over treasure means a full and proper study of this assemblage which will probably cost at least as half as much as the reward the finder got for it. Where are we going to get the funds to do that (and publish all the other 700 or so Treasure finds hoiked out of the ground by metal detectorists each year - to the level of die link studies of all those Roman coins from hoards)?
‘I for one would not accept the premise that the fear of nighthawks (looters) requires secrecy, speed or a total absence of consultation (especially in the six months separating the two campaigns). We do not live in an anarchy’.Well, I think when it comes to the way England and Wales deal with those that plunder archaeological sites for collectables, we might as well be. How many people does Prof. Carver think have been in the past two years all over the fields just over the hedge from the findspot, if not that field itself at night- nobody asking, nobody knowing? One, two, five? One two or five hundred? And what have they found? Even if they had been caught, what would have happened to them? That is the extent of the anti-archaeological anarchy that artefact hunting as a whole represents.
A spot on the south slope of a low ridge at the point a major Roman road crosses a shallow stream valley in an area where charter and place name evidence shows there may have been an important centre is asking to be gone over by artefact hunters. As this site was. Mr Herbert reported his find (four days later than I think he should), what would have happened if somebody else had found five of those items and not reported them and took them to a dealer saying they'd been "in the family for years" possibly since "uncle Joe was in Normandy"? Looking at the topography, I know exactly where I'd be looking if I were a metal detectorist. That site is totally open to whoever wants to go over it - by day or night - and we can do nothing to stop it, just ask "nicely please" if the plunderer would kindly show us some of what they've got before they put it in their personal private collection or on e-Bay/V-coins/Timeline Originals or wherever. We have no "rights" to ask any plunderer not to go there, we have no "rights" even to any information found and destroyed when (its not an "if" I think) he goes there, we have no "rights" to any thing he finds (unless its shiny gold or silver, but a complete enamelled hanging bowl for example is not Treasure by English law). When instead it should be a situation that an artefact hunting plunderer has no right to trash an important part (I'd like to say "any" part -but then will be accused of being an "extremist") of the archaeological record for personal entertainment and profit.
Glemsford is a small village with an interesting plan near Sudbury, just over the river from Essex. There was a commercial artefact hunting rally held here a while back in the course of which an unusual Roman lantern was found. It was promptly dug out there and then by the tekkies arousing some criticism in the archaeological world and media. In an effort to justify this, detectorists were claiming that the local archaeological FLO had been invited to the rally and had "failed to turn up" but the rally went ahead anyway. The justification for hoiking it out and not waiting until a properly equipped team could get there was that other detector-using artefact hunters could come and hoik it out, either legally, as one local detectorist Sukisal put it: that farmer had given quite a few detectorists permission to search his land, my friends being some of them. [...] So, no it wouldn't still be there if left for 'proper' excavation.[These are the "responsible" ones I suppose].
There is a well known nighthawk or two that resides in that very village, and I can tell you they were at that rally, I saw them.Let us just note that a moment, a well-known nighthawk "or two" lives in Glemsford, and responsible detector user Sukisal knows about this and can recognise him even.
”I am thrilled this mask is in St Louis. As a history buff and female with a very unusual MtDNA Subgroup from Egypt, I would like to enquire the Library do DNA testing of the artifact. A MtDna test would be most beneficial with the advent of ancient lineages of which I belong.Well, as history "buff" and a male with DNA too (which I am sure comes from a "lineage" just as ancient as Rose's), I am not in favour of any "library" doing any DNA work on a stolen artefact. This illustrates rather well the problems with this antiquity collecting issue. Many people do not see it in terms of what is right or wrong, but purely from the point of view of what they personally want. Rose is convinced she's the descendant of some ancient Egyptian "lineage" (and obviously concerned to let all and sundry hear about it). Therefore the only thing she thinks worth commenting on is that the SLAM should do a DNA analysis of this object for her own personal benefit. The whole problem is reduced to selfishness and self-interest. Rose comes over here as a selfish idiot. Most of the DNA on that mask will be from the restorer who sneezed on it as he wiped off the ownership inscription, and a prospective buyer who spluttered the Aboutaams' proffered champagne when told by the dealer how much they wanted for it.
