Goldstein, Geneva, and the Mummy Mask

Mummy mask excavated at Saqqara

It is known that Sidney Goldstein, the Associate Director of the St Louis Art Museum (SLAM) as well as the curator of Ancient Art, wrote a letter to Dr Mohammed Saleh, then director of the Cairo Museum, prior to the acquisition of the Egyptian mummy mask—known to have been excavated at Saqqara—by the museum in March 1998. The letter does not appear to have been released by SLAM, but a copy was made available to Malcolm Gay for his key article in February 2006. As the veracity of this letter has never been challenged we must assume its accuracy. (The letter was mentioned in a statement, "Press inquiry regarding provenance of mummy mask, 19.1998", issued by Brent Benjamin in January 2006.)

The letter includes a statement by Goldstein:

It [sc the mask] is currently on exhibition in the Egyptian exhibition at the Museum of Art and History in Geneva.

Goldstein, who also appears to have been a donor supporting the acquisition ("Sid Goldstein in memory of Donna and Earl Jacobs"), appears to be making a statement that the mask was on display in a major European museum. This claim would no doubt suggest to Saleh that the enquiry about "parallels" for the mask on display in Geneva was about a well-established object.

Was Goldstein mistaken about the venue? When was the mask displayed in the Musée d'histoire et d'art? What is the documentation for this exhibition?

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The scale of the returns to Italy

I have been busy working on an overview, "Returning Archaeological Objects to Italy". The scale of the returns to Italy from North American collections and galleries is staggering: in excess of 350 objects. This is clearly the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the material that has surfaced on the market without a history that can be traced back to the period before 1970.

I will provide more information in due course, but the researcher is a reminder that we need to take due diligence seriously when it comes to making acquisitions.

Stele returns to Greece

The Hellenic Ministry of Culture has announced (Saturday 8 September 2018) that a stele that had been due to be auctioned at Sotheby's in London in June 2017 has been returned to Greece (Friday 7 September 2018). The identification had been made by Cambridge-based forensic archaeologist Dr Christos Tsirogiannis.

It appeared that the stele had been supplied with a falsified history as its presence with Becchina until 1990 contradicted the published sale catalogue entry. It then moved into the hands of George Ortiz.

A year ago it was suggested that Sotheby's should contact the Greek authorities. Those negotiations appear to have concluded successfully.

The 4th century BC stele fragment, with the personal name, Hestiaios, will be displayed in the Epigraphic Museum in Athens. It appears to have come from a cemetery in Attica.

"Beating sites to death"

Policy decisions for protecting archaeological sites need to be informed by carefully argued positions based on data. Dr Sam Hardy has produced an important study, “Metal detecting for cultural objects until ‘there is nothing left’: The potential and limits of digital data, netnographic data and market data for analysis”. Arts 7, 3 (2018) [online]. This builds on Hardy's earlier research.

Readers should note Hardy's conclusion about his findings: "they corroborate the detecting community’s own perception that they are ‘beat[ing these sites] to death’".

Pieterjan Deckers, Andres Dobat, Natasha Ferguson, Stijn Heeren, Michael Lewis, and Suzie Thomas may wish to reflect on whether or not their own position is endangering the finite archaeological record.

Abstract
This methodological study assesses the potential for automatically generated data, netnographic data and market data on metal-detecting to advance cultural property criminology. The method comprises the analysi…

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