Looting Matters

It appears that Zahi Hawass has been appointed Minister of Antiquities ("Egypt antiquities chief becomes minister", AFP March 30, 2010).

Kate Taylor has also commented on the story ("Egyptian Antiquities Minister Returns Less Than a Month After Quitting", New York Times March 30, 2010).
His departure had left a power vacuum at the antiquities ministry, according to Christian Manhart, the chief of the museums and cultural objects section of Unesco, who led a delegation to Egypt last week. Mr. Manhart said he was not surprised that Mr. Hawass had been reinstated, only that it had happened so quickly.

Mr. Hawass, who has never been accused of being humble, said on Wednesday that he did not ask to come back, but that there was no one else who could do the job. “I cannot live without antiquities, and antiquities cannot live without me,” he said.
Top of the agenda will be the recovery of the outstanding looted items from the Cairo Museum and other archaeological stores i…

Looting Matters has been quieter than normal due to other commitments. However research has continued.

It strikes me that one of the lessons of the Polaroids is that museums (especially in North America) have been more careful over their acquisitions. Who would want a repeat of the bad publicity relating the return of objects to Italy (and Greece)?

Yet is the same true for those selling archaeological material that has no documented collecting history? Are some of those involved in the market pressing ahead with the sale of material that they perhaps suspect (and, I hope, not know) was handled by certain Swiss-based middlemen whose images have been seized in Geneva and Basel?

A number of sales are forthcoming. What will emerge?

The Aphrodite has been returned from the J. Paul Getty Museum to Aidone in Sicily.

A rift seems to have developed between farmer Fred Johnnson and detectorist Terry Herbert ("Sometimes I wish I'd never found that Hoard': How sharing £3m find of Saxon gold led to a bitter feud", Daily Mail March 21, 2011). There has been a frank exchange about access to land and the sharing of the "reward".

The National Heritage Memorial Fund (with the Art Fund) has announced that it has saved the Frome Hoard for the nation.
The Museum of Somerset takes possession of the £320,250 Frome Hoard and further funds of over £100,000 towards its conservation following the announcement of a £294,026 grant from the NHMF. The good news follows an intensive fundraising campaign kick-started by the Art Fund, the national fundraising charity for works of art, with a grant of £40,250, to help raise the funds needed for the extraordinary find of over 52,000 silver and bronze coins found last year by metal-detectorist Dave Crisp. Members of the public generously donated £13,657 towards the appeal, which the Art Fund match-funded with a further £10,000. The acquisition was also made possible thanks to funding from the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, the Headley Trust and other generous donations. I note that Dame Jenny Abramsky, Chair of NHMF, note…

I have made several comments about the Egyptian mummy mask in the St Louis Art Museum (SLAM) (most recently here). Ricardo A. St Hilaire has commented on the legal action taken by the US authorities (and full text here).

There are two sections that will be of particular interest:
14. In 1966, the Mask and other objects from the same burial assemblage were removed from packaging in Saqqara and given to the Egyptian Antiquities Organization Restoration Lab located in Cairo in preparation for future display.15. The Mask traveled to Cairo from Saqqara in box number fifty-four. This was the last documented location of the Mask in Egypt.The fact that the mask was record in 1966 is significant. (It is also apparently recorded in July 1959 and in 1962 (sections 12 and 13).

I have rehearsed the alleged collecting histories before here.

It is important to realise that the mask's excavator, Mohammed Zakaria Goneim, died in 1959.

Yet, although the mask was apparently still known in Egypt at…

The Press Office of what was Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) has now posted a list of objects that had been stolen from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The quality of the illustrations are not brilliant and the descriptions are less than full.

Museums, collectors and those involved in the trade need to be watchful for this material and indeed for other unrecorded items that may have been looted from archaeological sites or removed from excavation stores.

I am grateful to Lee Rosenbaum for the prompt on this and see her comment.