In a highly unusual legal maneuver by a U.S. museum seeking to retain recent acquisition, the St. Louis Museum of Art (SLAM) filed a complaint in federal district court on February 15, 2011 asking for a declaratory judgment to prevent federal authorities from seizing a 19th Dynasty Egyptian mask popularly known as Ka-Nefer-Nefer. Attorney Ricardo St. Hilaire has posted a helpful summary of SLAM’s complaint and legal arguments, in which he points out important ownership information that is missing from SLAM's complaint. According to St. Hilaire, "the museum essentially argues that the US government cannot legally take the mask because the statute of limitations has run out and because there is no reason to believe that the mask is Egyptian property or that it was illegally stolen or smuggled into the United States." Looting Matters also discusses the complaint and questions whether SLAM is adhering to the American Association of Museum Directors' Code of Ethics, which says “A museum director should not knowingly acquire or allow to be recommended for acquisition any object that has been stolen, removed in contravention of treaties or international conventions to which the United States is a signatory, or illegally imported in the United States.”
Here are some known facts about the controversy:
• All sides agree that the mask was excavated at Saqqara in 1952 by Mohammed Zakaria Goneim, then chief inspector of antiquities.
• All sides agree that the mask was sold to SLAM in 1998 by Phoenix Ancient Art in Geneva for US$499,000.
• Phoenix Ancient Art and SLAM contend, based on oral testimony, that the mask was given to Egyptologist M. Zakariya Goneim, who excavated the Saqqara necropolis in 1952, as part of the “division of finds” (partage) agreement that permitted archaeologists who do fieldwork to a share of the objects that are found. The mask reportedly appeared in a Brussels gallery in 1952. Then, according to the museum’s provenance, the mask entered the Kaloterna (or Kaliterna) Collection sometime in the “early 1960s” and was then resold to a "Private Collection, Switzerland." The SLAM provenance ends with a letter dated July 2, 1997 stating that Zuzi Jelinek in Geneva, Switzerland sold the mask to Phoenix Ancient Art in or about 1995. (But Malcolm Gay, a reporter for the St. Louis-based Riverfront Times, dialed the telephone number at the top of the 1997 letter and spoke to a man identifying himself as Jelinek's son, Ivo Jelinek, who said his mother never owned the Ka-Nefer-Nefer mask. ‘This is completely false information. . . .’)
• Zahi Hawass, Egyptian Minister of Antiquities, refutes the claim that the mask was given to Zakariya Goneim. That scenario is impossible, Hawass says, because according to the Egyptian law no “division of finds” was allowed with Egyptians. And Goneim, as an Egyptian excavator who worked with the Egyptian government, could not have offered the mask to anyone. Hawass also denies that the Ka-Nefer-Nefer mask appeared in the 1952 Brussels gallery, because that same year, and for the next seven years, the mask was listed in the Saqqara inspectorate's registered book as a stored item until its transfer to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo for exhibition in 1959. An image showing the mask in the Egyptian Museum acquisition register has been posted on the Stanford Archaeology Center website. According to Egyptian Museum records, the mask never arrived. And no export permit has surfaced showing that the mask was legally removed from the country in accordance with Egyptian cultural patrimony law (Egyptian Law No. 215 on the Protection of Antiquities) that was in force at the time.
• Neither SLAM nor Phoenix Ancient Art has produced any documentation that the Egyptian government gave the mask to M. Zakariya Goneim, and they do not mention that Goneim’s own writings indicate that he did not own the mask. In the acknowledgements section of his 1956 book The Buried Pyramid, Goneim thanks the Egyptian Department of Antiquities in Cairo "for permission to reproduce" two photographs of the mask. SLAM and Phoenix Ancient Art also fail to mention that Goneim was falsely accused of stealing and smuggling antiquities by Egyptian authorities in 1957-58 after his return to Egypt from a lecture tour of the U.S. Subjected to intense police interrogation alleging that Goneim had stolen a large and valuable vessel that had been discovered at Saqqara two years earlier, Goneim proclaimed his innocence. In January 1959 French Egyptologist Jean-Philippe Lauer found the vessel in a corner of the Egyptian Museum’s vast depository and hurried to deliver the good news to authorities, only to discover that Goneim (a broken man) had committed suicide by jumping into the Nile. Of all the people in the world that SLAM and Phoenix would choose (without any proof) to link to the stolen Ka-Nefer-Nefer mask, the last person, it seems, would be M. Zakariya Goneim.
We feel strongly that SLAM has not undertaken a full, rigorous and systematic due diligence procedure to exclude the possibility that the mask was not removed illegally from the Saqqara store. In addition, SLAM has so far been unable to present authenticated documentation to demonstrate that the mask did leave Egypt in the 1950s as has been suggested.
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11 comments:
One thing that has gotten confused in the discussion is the matter of the Egyptian register that shows the coffin and mask. This is not any sort of "museum" registry book-but any excavation director who works in Egypt can tell you that this is the excavation registry that is carried out at the end of each digging season, by the dig director together with the SCA inspectors. All excavations still use such registration books (called the "sigalla" in Arabic, from the verb to register). Each object is given a sequential number for internal purposes. This is followed by the placement of the objects in storerooms on-site or off-site. Division (back in the old days) or movement to a local or national museum is a completely separate process. I don't know that this changes anything- and it may not- but clarity is important, especially as SLAM doesn't seem to know to this day what the registration book really is. An actual entry in the Cairo Museum would be reflected in the Journal d'Entrée, which is a sequential system put in place long ago, and still in use.
The following message is posted on behalf of Peter Lacovara:
On Mar 2, 2011, at 10:37 PM, Lacovara, Peter wrote:
The St. Louis Art Museum was informed by me soon after the purchase of that Mask that it came from Goneim’s excavations, was published and where, and that although it was not registered in the Cairo Museums’ inventory, the only means by which it could have legally left Egypt was if it had been retained by Goniem and later legally sold by him or his heirs and they would need to investigate this. They did not.
Another telling fact is that the name of the owner of the mask Ka-nefer-nefer was written in hieratic on the hand of mask and was scratched out and over painted to disguise its identity. If this were a painting published in a European catalog no one would dream of trying to justify keeping it without a clear and legitimate history. The Museum never undertook due diligence in trying to determine the provenance of this piece despite being told there was a cloud over it from the beginning.
They have no justification in retaining this mask and it should be returned to Egypt and the Museum should underwrite the cost of a conservator removing the over paint and restoring the inscription on the hand.
Peter Lacovara
Fascinating information! It sounds as if it might be possible to analyze the paint to get an idea of when the name of the owner was covered over.
Dear SLAM:
It's a SLAM dunk, return the mask to Egypt please and stop wasting time and money.
This is great information!
We all should thank Peter Lacovara for making this important information available for everyone!
It is a shame what SLAM is trying to achieve with the government. They should immediately drop this case.
To the folks at SLAM: you are an embarassment for all Museums in the world.
These discussions gloss over the entire picture of the antiquities market in Egypt into the 1950's. First, there was a legally sanctioned policy of selling objects offered by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, from the so-called Salle des Ventes. Secondly, objects from legally sanctioned excavations, published, also made their way into the art market. It is within this global picture that the SLAM issue must be considered. There appear to be precedents. The issue is not as open-and-shut as some alleged it to be.
Bob Bianchi
Sorry, Bob, but I am not seeing your point. Many thing were different back in the day, but we can't use what we might have been fine back then to gloss over what we do now. In any case, can you please help me understand what does what you said have to do with what SLAM is doing today?
Government sues to seize St. Louis museum's mummy mask
Interesting observation from Paul Barford here.
It is my belife that artifacts that were taken from historical sites should be retained by those who rescued them from being lost.
Berlin has restord the Perganom (sp?)from Turkey. I have visted the site and believe the Turks could not have "saved" it bcause of all the other relics tath are in disarray nearby.
The case of the Pergamon is quite different from the Ka Nefer-Nefer. Finders keepers is not what the law accepts involving present-day theft or looting of antiquities, which is what we are discussing in this post.
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