Private Collecting and the Art Market for Byzantine Artifacts

After a review of the history of trading and collecting of Byzantine artifacts since the end of the nineteenth century, this chapter discusses the present movement pushing for an end to the antiquities market. As this market reacts like any other one, so the argument goes, the allegedly increased demand leads to higher prices and thus to an increased supply, served by a veritable explosion of illegal excavations. The consequences are devastating: destruction of archaeological sites, and archaeological finds without context being worthless from the perspective of archaeologists. According to the laws of the market, illegal digging would stop if demand dried up. At first glance, these arguments appear conclusive; on closer inspection, however, they turn out to be questionable.

Minima Epigraphica Auctionum (2019). La Estela de la Milesia Dafnis

This paper presents an unpublished inscription from the antiquities market. This entry pertains to the Milesian woman Daphnis’ gravestone. A new exemplar of a Milesian citizen who lived in Attica gives a novel anthroponym to Roman prosopography. In this brief note, we discuss the textual and iconographical aspects of the new item.

RECENTLY EXCAVATED INSCRIPTIONS AND MANUSCRIPTS (2008–2018)

Between 2008 and 2018 a significant number of inscriptions and manuscripts from early China were discovered or published. These sources include hundreds of new oracle bone and bronze inscriptions; more than thirty scientifically excavated literary manuscripts; thousands of private and official scientifically excavated documents; and more than seventy literary texts acquired from the antiquities market. This review article, focusing mainly on artifacts with archaeological provenance, offers a global overview of these new materials that have already renewed, or will certainly soon renew, the field of early China studies.

antiquities market we deserve: 'Royal-Athena Galleries' (1942-2020)

On September 13, 2020 a quarter of a century had elapsed since the Swiss and Italian authorities raid in the Free Port of Geneva, on the warehouses of Giacomo Medici, later convicted of involvement in cases of trafficked antiquities. Since then, many other raids followed on properties of other notorious antiquities traffickers, thousands of antiquities were confiscated from them and their invaluable archives were discovered and seized. The research on these archives resulted in hundreds of notable repatriations so far, but mainly in the enrichment of our knowledge about the criminal way in which the so-called ‘reputable’ members of the international antiquities market have been acting since the 1970 UNESCO Convention, which they completely ignored in practice. Despite the numerous occasions on which these ‘reputable’ members were identified as involved, even today they continue to act in the same way, some without any (or known) legal sanctions. This chapter reviews the illicit associations of one of these ‘prominent’ members of the international antiquities market, the ‘Royal-Athena Galleries’ in New York, a gallery run by the antiquities dealer Jerome Eisenberg, who has repeatedly been found selling looted, smuggled and stolen antiquities. I then present seven antiquities, most of them identified in October 2019, one in March 2020, soon before the retirement of Jerome Eisenberg and the closure of ‘Royal-Athena Galleries’ on October 31, 2020. This piece lays out all the relevant evidence from the confiscated archives and combines everyone involved to illustrate the network that ‘circulated’ these seven objects. This case study also highlights all the problems that are ongoing in this research field, proving that essentially nothing has changed since 1995, or even 1970, and we indeed deserve the (illicit) antiquities market we still have. On cover:ANNIBALE CARRACCI (BOLOGNA 1560 - ROME 1609), An Allegory of Truth and Time c. 1584-1585.Oil on canvas | 130,0 x 169,6 cm. (support, canvas/panel/str external) | RCIN 404770Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2021.

Tales of saviours and iconoclasts. On the provenance of "the Dead Sea Scrolls of Buddhism"

Academic research on newly discovered ancient Buddhist manuscripts is largely based on objects that come from the antiquities market and to a much lesser degree on objects coming from documented and controlled archaeological excavations. Despite their being unprovenanced, collectors and scholars often present such objects with narratives mimicking provenance. The use of the label "Dead Sea Scrolls" attached to archaeological material without connections to Judaism or early Christianity is a prevalent example of this scholarly praxis. In this article, we deconstruct provenance narratives associated with the undocumented Buddhist manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection and discuss their implications for research on these manuscripts and beyond. On cover:ANNIBALE CARRACCI (BOLOGNA 1560 - ROME 1609), An Allegory of Truth and Time c. 1584-1585.Oil on canvas | 130,0 x 169,6 cm. (support, canvas/panel/str external) | RCIN 404770Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2021.

The Second Wave

Renaissance antiquarians relied heavily upon coins to reconnect with the Classical world. Popes and princes became avid collectors, stocking their Kunstkammern (cabinets of curiosities) with thousands of numismatic treasures. Collecting led to cataloguing and research, but also to the production of forgeries and fantasy coins to feed the antiquities market and to fill the gaps of history. Books showcased imagined coin portraits of every notable figure beginning with Adam and Eve. This preoccupation with portraiture abetted the use of physiognomy by numismatists, who sought psychological insights from the images of Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, Nero, and others depicted on coins. The efforts of numismatists such as Joseph Eckhel to collect and classify all known ancient coin-types, numbering in the tens of thousands, eventually made it impossible for a single individual to comprehend all of numismatics.

Descriptions and the materiality of texts

This article builds on the notions of thick and thin description elaborated by Geertz and looks at what descriptive methods have been used in the field of papyrology, a sub-discipline of classics that studies ancient manuscripts on papyrus fragments recovered through legal and illegal excavations in Egypt from the 19th century. Past generations of papyrologists have described papyri merely as resources to retrieve ancient ‘texts’. In the article I argue these descriptions have had negative effects in the way this ancient material has been studied, preserved, and also exchanged through the antiquities market. Through a series of case studies, I offer an alternative description of papyrus fragments as things, which have a power that can be activated under specific circumstances or entanglements. In demonstrating papyrus manuscripts’ unstable nature and shifting meanings, which are contingent on such entanglements, the article calls for a new politics and ethics concerning their preservation and exchange.

More Dubious Dead Sea Scrolls

In the course of the last eighteen years more than 75 new “Dead Sea Scrolls” fragments have surfaced on the antiquities market. These are commonly referred to as post-2002 Dead Sea Scrolls-like fragments. A growing number of scholars regard a substantial part of them as forgeries. In this article, we will discuss four more dubious fragments, but this time from the 20th Century—or at least from pre-2002. Two of the fragments have been known since the late nineties and are published in the DJD series. One was published in Revue de Qumran (2003), and one in Gleanings from the Caves (2016). All four are today accepted as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls dataset even though they are unprovenanced and have made-up—or at least very adaptable—lists of previous owners. In this article, we will critically review their provenance and discuss the lack of proper interest in provenance on the part of the collector who owns them and the scholars who published them.