The "dodgy" papyrus and Harvard Theological Review

It now appears that the New York Times was premature in announcing that PDodg. would be published in the January 2013 number of Harvard Theological Review. It has now been stated that "A Harvard University journal says it hasn’t fully verified research that purportedly shows some early Christians believed Jesus had a wife, even though Harvard’s divinity school touted the research during a publicity blitz this week" ("Harvard journal: Research into papyrus with text about Jesus’ ‘wife’ not yet verified", Washington Post September 22, 2012).

The report goes on:

the review’s co-editor Kevin Madigan said he and his co-editor had only “provisionally” committed to a January publication, pending the results of the ongoing studies. In an email, Madigan said the added studies include “scientific dating and further reports from Coptic papyrologists and grammarians.”

HTR could have avoided this apparent turnaround by having a more rigorous publication policy along the lines of the Archaeological Institute of America for the American Journal of Archaeology.

AP quotes Ric Elia who makes the striking point: “If it’s real, it was looted and smuggled, most likely ... If it’s not real, then it shouldn’t even be out there in the discussion.”

This now raises issues about why Professor King publicised PDodg. through the NYT. Was she unaware of the issues relating to recently surfaced material? Why had she not completed scientific studies on the papyrus?

Publishing recently surfaced Mayan pots

Mike Smith has drawn my attention to a recent article in the Smithsonian Magazine (Chip Brown, "El Mirador, the Lost City of the Maya", May 2011). Smith notes:

The article includes photographs of several spectacular Maya polychrome vessels (p. 45) that apparently are not from the site. In fact, we have no idea where these vessels are from; they lack provenience. In a post on the Aztlan listserv today, Karen Bruhns identifies these vessels as unprovenienced, looted, objects.

One of the pieces has been identified as coming from the so-called November Collection. The point is made:

One might expect that magazines by and for wealthy art dealers might publish looted objects without a second thought. But Smithsonian Magazine is supposedly a legitimate source of news about natural history and related topics, associated with the premier museum in the U.S. Their inclusion of photos of looted objects is deplorable, a real ethical lapse.

Smith draws attention to an article in the New York Times (Susan Diesenhouse, "Arts in America; Looted or Legal? Objects Scrutinized at Boston Museum", July 30, 1998). The discussion seems to be familiar:

Museum officials curtly rejected a request from Guatemala to eventually return a 138-piece collection of Mayan art that is the jewel of its pre-Columbian display. In a two-paragraph letter written a month ago to a Guatemalan official, Malcolm Rogers, director of the museum, said that its board of trustees ''found no basis'' for Guatemala's ownership claim because the country could not produce legal title to the pieces.

It looks as the Smithsonian needs to revisit its publication policy.

Germany: what is "important" cultural property?

Derek Fincham has responded to my comment on a Germany as a developing "hub" in the antiquities market. My report was based on reported interviews with two German practitioners (one in a museum, the other in the police service) who felt that the German legislation would not be adequate to address the issue of recently surfaced antiquities.

Fincham comments on Article 5 of the UNESCO Convention with its emphasis on the establishment of "a list of important public and private cultural property". The Article also talks about "the formation of draft laws and regulations designed to secure the protection of the cultural heritage and particularly prevention of the illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of important cultural property" (emphasis mine).

What is important? Would a single Apulian krater fall into that category? What about a pair of kraters? What about a set of South Italian cavalry armour?

Some could argue that these items are not "important" in the overall scheme of things. However if you accept that some 95% of the corpus of Apulian pots do not have a recorded find-spot, then you will also have to acknowledge that major harm is being (or has been) sustained by the "important" archaeological record of Apulia.

The UNESCO Convention requires an attitude shift. Do museums continue to acquire and to display objects that have no recorded history prior to 1970? Do dealers continue to handle antiquities that have no recorded history prior to 1970? Do academics continue to publish antiquities that have no recorded history prior to 1970?

And if a German museum curator and a German law enforcement officer feel that their own German laws are not adequate (fit for purpose?) to address the issue of recently-surfaced antiquities then we should listen to them.

And it is appropriate to draw attention to them here.

Shanks: "if there were no market for looted antiquities, looting would stop"

Hershel Shanks of Biblical Archaeology Review has written a provocative and, in my opinion, wrong-headed piece, "First Person: A Radical Proposal. Why don’t the archaeologists join the looters?", BAR 34:06, Nov/Dec 2008.

Here is Shanks' comment on the archaeological "suggestion" for limiting the looting of sites:

The archaeological establishment’s principal suggestion that will supposedly stop the looting is—well, not to put too fine a point on it—stupid. “Don’t buy looted antiquities” is the strategy. Admittedly, if there were no market for looted antiquities, looting would stop. If the looters could not sell their loot, they would discontinue looting.

The antiquities recently returned to Italy and Greece from North American collections have reminded us that objects need to have histories that can be documented prior to 1970. If a tombarolo discovered another Attic red-figured krater attributed to (or "signed" by) Euphronios in an Etruscan tomb, I have a suspicion that no responsible museum curator would touch it with a barge-pole. Would the museum want all the adverse publicity? And even if a private collector bought it, the piece could never (I suspect) be placed on a short- or a long-term loan in a museum without drawing some unfavourable comment. So I have to agree with Shanks: "If the looters could not sell their loot, they would discontinue looting."

Shanks suggests that the result of this policy is that archaeological objects (by now stripped of their meaningful archaeological contexts) end up in some private collection away from public view. But remember that the Nostoi exhibitions of returned antiquities have included pieces that have formed part of major North American private collections, including the Leon Levy and Shelby White collection, and the Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman collection. So these private collections are not beyond public scrutiny.

Then we move into areas where I disagree with Shanks. He writes:

The second strategy adopted by the archaeological establishment is even stupider: Forbid study by scholars of looted objects.

There is a balance to be struck between making the acquisition of newly surfaced antiquities transparent, and safeguarding the corpus of knowledge. Thus a new acquisition of, say, a Minoan larnax by a North American museum should be published in an annual report (complete with photograph) and posted on the museum's website. (In these days of electronic documents that is not exactly difficult.) In addition, the piece can be posted on the AAMD database, in the way that the Portland Art Museum has done for an Indian sculpture.

But, for example, should a fragmentary Greek funerary stele enter the corpus of knowledge through a scholarly discussion of the iconography that is published in an academic journal - only to find, several years later, that the conclusions are undermined when the true context is revealed. The article will become redundant. What happens when forgeries of Cycladic marble figurines are allowed to enter the corpus of known pieces? Shanks underestimates the scale of the issues.

Shanks has been supporting a long-running campaign ('The Publication of Unprovenanced Artifacts'), backed by numerous academics. The targets are the publishing policies of bodies such as the AIA and ASOR. I have addressed this issue before, and I continue to believe Shanks' proposal is flawed - and it is not unconnected to the recent discussion of inscribed incantation bowls that appear to have come from Iraq.

Then we come to Shanks' main proposal:

Compete with the looters. Professional archaeologists should professionally excavate areas subject to looting—and fund their excavations by selling the “loot.” After all, we are assured by Giorgio Gligoris, “profits are phenomenal.” The “loot” from these professional excavations must, of course, be available for study and publication. And we will always know where they are in an open market—just as we know about the location of a Renoir painting.

Moreover, much of this professionally excavated loot will end up in museums. Indeed, museums will be some of the prime purchasers—with money provided by their benefactors. Other pieces will later be donated to museums by private purchasers. Such gifts provide the donor with a tax deduction in many countries—a nice inducement.

Paul Barford has discussed why it is not a good idea to dispose of the datasets from archaeological excavations. And the proposal to have tax-deductible gifts of antiquities will ring disquieting bells in the heads of informed archaeologists and museum curators.

Shanks closes with a discussion of Brian Rose's comments on the excavation of a tumulus in Turkey (I presume in Phrygia).

I recall a conversation I had with the current president of the Archaeological Institute of America, Brian Rose (before he became president). He had just given a paper decrying the looting of a rich tumulus in Turkey. There were several other tumuli at the site, so I suggested to Brian that professional archaeologists should excavate these other tumuli before the looters got hold of them; finance the dig through the sale of the artifacts to museums, where they would be available for study and publication. I’m sorry to say the suggestion had no appeal.

I am not surprised that Shanks' suggestion "had no appeal". And if you realise that a recent (i.e. 2006) study of tumuli in Lydia (also in Turkey) suggests that some 90% have been looted, you are likely to accept (or at least acknowledge) the reasons why archaeologists are reluctant to adopt a policy that could lead to a further destruction of the finite archaeological record.

Shanks thinks that his "suggestion here will no doubt fall on deaf ears". Actually, his piece shows that he has not been listening to what archaeologists have been saying.

Intellectual consequences for Biblical Archaeology?

Are some scholars ignoring the intellectual consequences of looting and forgeries for their discipline?

The Biblical Archaeology Society has posted a 'Statement of Concern' on 'The Publication of Unprovenanced Artifacts'. It has a list of distinguished signatories.

The first point states, 'We are strongly opposed to looting'. Good: we have some common ground. This is what Gill and Chippindale have described as 'Material Consequences'. We can discuss the role of governments - and widen it to include the professional responsibilities of archaeologists, museum curators, dealers, magazine editors, etc. In other words, the solution to looting is not just the area of concern for national governments, we have our part to play as well.

Let me for now dwell on point two of the 'Statement of Concern':

"We also recognize that artifacts ripped from their context by looters often lose much of their meaning. On the other hand, this is not always true, and even when it is, looted objects, especially inscriptions, often have much of scholarly importance to impart."

Gill and Chippindale have discussed the Intellectual Consequences of looting and unprovenanced objects. Let me take one example (which I have discussed in Evangelical Quarterly 77.4 (2005): 354-58), the inscribed ivory pomegranate ‘thought to be the only relic of King Solomon's Temple’. Let me quote myself:

"The pomegranate is reported to have surfaced in ‘an Antiquities shop in the Old City of Jerusalem’ in 1979, purchased anonymously in Jerusalem, removed from the country, offered anonymously for sale, and purchased—reportedly for $500,000 in 1998—by the Israel Museum with the help of an anonymous Swiss benefactor (see conveniently Nahman Avigad, ‘The Inscribed Pomegranate from the “House of the Lord”’, in Hillel Geva (ed.), Ancient Jerusalem Revealed (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994), 128-37)."

I have rechecked the Israel Museum's website today (August 10, 2007) and this is what is said:

"Before its arrival in the Museum, the pomegranate was examined by leading epigraphists (scholars of ancient inscriptions) and deemed authentic. The recent reexamination, which used an environmental scanning electron microscope, subjected the inscription and patina to closer scrutiny than had been possible before. The new study shows that although the object itself dates to the Late Bronze Age (14th-13th century BCE), its inscription is not ancient."

Let me unpack this.

a. The pomegranate was 'unprovenanced' and 'surfaced' on the market.

b. The signatories of the statement would now take this position (point 2):

"We also recognize that artifacts ripped from their context by looters often lose much of their meaning. On the other hand, this is not always true, and even when it is, looted objects, especially inscriptions, often have much of scholarly importance to impart."

c. The pomegranate enters the corpus of knowledge and is accepted as "the only known relic from the First Temple in Jerusalem" (quote from The Israel Museum).

d. The signatories of the statement would no doubt maintain this position (point 4):

"It has been rightly said that the history of the ancient Near East as we know it could not have been written without the use of unprovenanced, often looted artifacts and inscriptions".

e. Scientific tests suggests that the pomegranate is ancient but that the inscription was added in recent times.

f. The pomegranate cannot be used as evidence from the First Temple in Jerusalem.

g. There were Intellectual Consequences caused by the acquiring and publishing of this 'unprovenanced' artifact.

Let me close with my words from EQ:

"The pomegranate is a good reminder that forgers choose something that people want to be true, and will prove both intellectually stimulating and commercially rewarding."

Have the signatories added their names to a flawed statement of concern?