Where was Ka Nefer Nefer displayed in Geneva?

Mask excavated at Saqqara

Last week I commented on issues about Sidney Goldstein's explicit statement that the Ka Nefer Nefer mask had been displayed in Geneva's Museum of Art and History. This was stated in a letter to the Cairo Museum apparently prior to acquisition. Indeed the letter has been cited as proof of the rigour of the due diligence process conducted by the curatorial team at the St Louis Art Museum.

It became clear last week that curatorial staff at Geneva's Musées d'art et d'histoire could find no clear record of the mask's display in the museum. Indeed there was a strong rejection of the link between the museum and the mask.

The letter to Cairo has not been placed in the public domain so some of the detail is unclear.

So was Goldstein mistaken? He had presumably been to Geneva to view the mask. Where did he see it? Was it in the museum? Or was it elsewhere? When did he see it?

We should also remember that the letter suggests that Goldstein's is asking about parallels for the mask.

Does the Goldstein letter contain two statements that could have been misleading? Does this undermine the claim that curatorial staff at SLAM conducted a rigorous due diligence process?

It would be helpful for SLAM to reveal details of the acquisition process in order to eliminate any uncertainty.

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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…

Looting Matters

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