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June 9, 2020

Tuesday, June 09, 2020 - 1 comment

Iconoclasm in the eyes of the beholder

Illustration of the Beeldenstorm
F. De Witt Huberts
The siege of Haarlem.
Op/Ed - By Lynda Albertson

History tells us that our predecessors had a word for iconoclasm, εἰκονοκλασία. In Ancient Greek it gets its roots from two words:

εἰκών - figure, image, likeness, portrait

κλάω - to break, to break off, to break into pieces, to be broken or deflected; to break, to weaken, to frustrate.

The Romans referred to it as Damnatio Memoriae; condemnation of memory.  In a world with no photography, and with what little remains of writing from that period, anything that was erased during these periods was likely lost from public memory.

The OED, the definitive record of the modern English language, defines an iconoclast as an individual who challenges "cherished beliefs or venerated institutions on the grounds that they are erroneous or pernicious".

During war, much has been written about protecting the history of our vanquished enemies.  Article 56 of the regulations respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV) speaks to the property of municipalities and calls for penalties for the prohibitive seizure, destruction or damaging of cultural property protected by international law.  Likewise, the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunal regarded the pillage and destruction of foreign property, including cultural objects, as a war crime.

But things get blurry when civil conflicts are the cause of iconoclasm, especially when the incidences are internal to a country's borders, politics, or religion. Or at least so thinks the iconoclasts involved, who see their actions as wholly reasonable, and in some cases downright righteous.   

A little more than 500 years ago, Augustinian friar Martin Luther wrote his 95 Theses against the Church's indulgences to Albrecht, the Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg.  This event is believed by some to have fuelled the start of the Bildersturm, the "picture storm" of the Protestant Reformation in Germany and the Netherlands.  Later and for many of the same reasons, the wave of Puritan religious fervor carried over to England, sometimes using state-approved civic channels to remove objects that no longer sat well with the majority, as was the case with the removal of the Cheapside Cross, voted on and approved for demolition by London’s Common Council on 27 April 1643.

Crowds tear down the Cheapside Cross, 2 May1643
Other incidences were religiously-sanctioned, handed down to churches in the reign of Edward VI, like the defacing of the 14th Century devotional statue of St Margaret and thousands of others ecclesiastic artworks which once highlighted English churches in the late medieval period.  Destroyed with the formal approval of Anglican reformers, Edward VI’s 1547 instructions ordered the devout to "to take away, utterly extinct and destroy all shrines, coverings of shrines, all tables, candlesticks, trindles or rolls of wax, pictures, paintings and all other monuments of feigned miracles, pilgrimages, idolatry, and superstition so that there remain no memory of the same within their churches or houses. And they shall exhort their parishioners to do the like within their houses."   After this purge, so little religious art was left, that it would be easy to assume that there was no native painting and very little sculpture in pre-Reformation Britain. 

Watching their past pulled down and in some cases white-limed, those in disagreement, sometimes, tried to save what they had been mandated to destroy. Church monuments were hidden away haphazardly from the angry iconoclasts when and how they could.  Sometimes, they even buried them in the ground, perhaps as one last defiant act of solemn funerary respect, or perhaps hoping the artworks could be retrieved once the anger-fueled storm had passed.  

In the wet soil of England, moisture, as well as time, wreaked havoc on these once venerated objects, stripping them of their finishes and leaching away much of their vibrant color.  Time erased what artists had worked so hard to create, as the statues and icons were never meant to be subject to the dampness of English weather. 

Saint Margaret at St Andrew Church, Fingringhoe, Essex
Some, like St. Margaret, depicted above, were found years later on church grounds, then painstakingly restored, as best as was possible, to sit once again inside the church they once decorated.  Others, less fortunate, eventually traveled miles from their sacred homes, turning up on the art market at European art fairs like BRAFA or TEFAF.  These traveling masterpieces were snapped up by specialized galleries, like Fluminalis and Galerie Brimo de Laroussilhe, who long have known that selling Art médiéval, touched by iconoclasm, can earn a dealer a princely sum for the pains and remains of the past. 

And while these Christian Reformations are now a distant memory, we watched in digital horror recently, as history repeated itself in new and even more disturbingly theatrical ways, at the hands of the Islamic State.  The group's own brand of religious politics, like others before them, believed that rending asunder a past incongruent with the caliphate's beliefs was righteous; so much so that they digitally curated their destructive handiwork at well known cultural heritage sites like Palmyra in Syria, the Mosul Cultural Museum, Nineveh, and Nimrud in Iraq rather than retain them for posterity.

Da'esh militant taking a pneumatic drill to the last fully preserved colossal Lamassu.
Nergal Gate, Nineveh
And while it is easy to see the wrongness of denominational iconoclasm throughout history, a portion of the public, and even some academics, have recently shown that they view ideological iconoclasm through differing filters, picking and choosing what is worth retaining and what is worth destroying, based in part upon the stresses and tears an object creates in the social fabric of society in a given place or time. 

Take for example the reliefs of victory and torture illustrating the futile cycle of the rise and fall of empires of long ago, etched onto the walls of Neo-Assyrian king Ashurbanipal's grand royal residence in the citadel of Nineveh.  One depicts the Assyrian battle at Memphis in 667 BCE.  

Parts of this extraordinary relief are mesmerizingly graphic, as well as tragically poignant.  The panels vividly document the Assyrian aesthetic of memorializing its violent and gruesome deeds in furtherance of their rule.   This panel explicitly illustrates the fate that awaited the defeated soldiers of King Taharka.  Five of the captured Nubians can been seen being marched off single-file, handcuffed, humiliated, and bare-footed. At the rear of the line, two Assyrian soldiers triumphantly hold the decapitated heads of two of their vanquished opponents. 

"Panel 17, Room M" of the North Palace at Nineveh
On display at the British Museum 
Another relief, from King Sennacherib's Palace Without Rival at Nineveh. illustrates the conquest and destruction of Lachish after the siege of 701 BCE.  Likewise, it is meticulously carved in grisly detail, with parts of the relief depicting the unfortunate members of Lachish's ruling government being tortured to death.  Nearby, what remains of the city's townspeople, are seen as they are led away into a life of slavery, dominated by their conquerors.  Yet today these images are seen as a record of histories long past.  

The defeated citizens of Lachish led away as prisoners by the Assyrians.
On display at the British Museum 

Neither of these artworks evoke a visceral horror as they would, had the events occurred in the more recent past. Seen with eyes unmoved by emotions, they are considered, simply, historical representations of war, or even art.  As ancient artifacts they are admired for their violent realism, and take pride-of-place in some of the world's prestigious museums.

Perhaps these reliefs are treasured because the footprints of the citizens of Memphis and Lachish who fought in these battles, and the cemeteries where their corpses lie, are not our own forefathers.  The blood of these historic fighters has long since soaked into the ground where other civilizations took root, grew and now walk.

But in the aftermath of George Floyd’s tragic killing, some pains are fresher, and instead of suggesting unifying ways to reconcile ourselves with our own distasteful pasts and presents, some professors and curators have seen fit to encourage their own iconoclastic storms.  One, in a series of tweets, even provided a "hypothetically" detailed instructions on how to destroy public monuments as a public service announcement.


Others don't even hide behind carefully-worded innuendo. Instead, they go straight for enhancing the public spectacle of destruction even using the skills they were taught in conservation and historic preservation, but now turned towards demolition.

But as proper historians know deep down in their entrails, ridding ourselves completely of unwanted history is farcical.  And while the new vanguard of undoing a wrong, by removing monuments to oppression might come from a good place, and might make us feel like we are contributing to something good, the act itself will not bring absolution.  Nor does it pay sufficient penance for the years we stood idly by, remaining silent, while others were mistreated, abused, and killed.

Citizens standing over a toppled statue of Joseph Stalin
23 October 1956
History is littered with the broken statues of distasteful oppressors, toppled time and time again, in justifiable anger-filled rage and resentment.  Some are bashed to bits by angry mobs, others are discreetly removed, sometimes under the cloak of darkness, to be tucked into less offensive spaces in deference to those injured by what the statue represents.   But even if we could deface, pull down or blow up every morally reprehensible visual representation of the world's tyrants and bullies, we won't ever be washed free of their sins, or our own complacency in idly letting their atrocities take root and happen.

Tweeting out instructions for taking down statues seen as images of slave oppression will not erase the shattering consequences of that era in America's history.  Nor will it stop tomorrow's injustices when it comes to race, or tomorrow's killing of another black man at the hands of police brutality, or when George Floyd's name joins the list of the only vaguely remembered black men who have been abused or killed, while little else changes.

Erasing the history of the confederacy and the South's poor choices in these monuments won't erase the racial hatred which historically allowed these monuments to be erected. And time would be better spent wrestling with the present and asking why, in 2020, we still have an environment that allows racial and ethnic hatred which kills.

Having said all that, let me be clear, I am in no way advocating for the preservation of these morally repugnant monuments. If I had my druthers, they would be procedurally and physically dealt with in a way that addresses the painfulness of the argument listening to the voices of the voiceless.

What I am against are these kinds of performative acts which are often more about political capital than the hard-grinding work of enacting real social change.  We need change much more than simply sweeping old bronzes under unresolved rugs, where the undercurrents of racism still creep and grow, like bigger and bigger dust bunnies, threatening to choke us all.

The end of a statue is not the same as the end of the bitterness and in the end toppling them does little to heal anyone.

We need to do better.  We need to be better.  We need to do better.  Every single one of us, needs to do better. 

June 6, 2020

Auction Alert (and Withdrawal): Tunisian treasures up for auction are withdrawn from Coutau-Bégarie auction house in Paris


On June 1st, the Institut National du Patrimoine (INP) in Tunisia posted their concerns on their Facebook page about an upcoming auction at Coutau-Bégarie auction house in Paris, scheduled for the 11th of June.  Up for sale was a grouping of Tunisian personal effects, made up mostly of Qur’ans, manuscripts, books of poetry, tunisian djebba, (the country's traditional attire for men), and personal correspondence dating from the reign of the Beys.  The items up for sale were modestly priced, starting at €120 and going upwards to €1500.

The objects were once the personal property of an influential Tunisian dignitary Mohamed Habib Djellouli, (arabic: محمد الحبيب الجلولي).  Born into a patrician family belonging to the Tunisian aristocracy, Djellouli had served as the Caïd-Gouverneur of Kairouan, Nabeul and Béja and later as the Minister of the Pen and Minister of Justice of Bey.   The Beys he ruled Tunisia from 1613 until 1957, when the modern Tunisian Republic was formed. Djellouli's personal effects, accumulated over years, were passed down to his heirs after his death in 1957, the same year that the monarchy was abolished and the beylical office terminated. 

The objects from his private collection drew concerns from the INP as there was no record of the pieces having left the territory of the Republic of Tunisia, and it appears that the transfer was done without the knowledge of the country's Ministry of Cultural Affairs.  It is their job to determine if movable properties fall within the parameters of the cultural heritage code, which explicitly prohibits the export of movable cultural property of national or international historic value. 

The country's Ministry of Cultural Affairs was established in Tunisia in 1961 to implement cultural policy on behalf of the country.  The Institut National du Patrimoine (INP) operates alongside the ministry and oversees twenty archaeological and ethnological museums throughout the Republic.  It was the INP who first sounded the alarm to the Ministry of Cultural Affairs in Tunisia regarding their concerns about the sale in Paris.  

Tunisia's current law for the archaeological, historical and traditional arts patrimony was enacted in 1994 and amended in 2011.  Known as Decree-law n° 2011-43 and dated 25 May 2011, this updated law increases the penalties for infractions related to moveable heritage.  Under the current national law, article 57, the export of movable property is prohibited though temporary export of movable cultural property is possible, subject to authorization from the Ministry of Cultural Affairs.  

Yesterday Ghazi Gherardi, the ambassador and permanent representative of Tunisia to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation  - UNESCO announced that all 114 objects related to the "Collection of a Dignitary of the Beylical Court" had been withdrawn from the sale with the auction house sending a communiqué containing a pledge to cease the sale procedures until the competent arbitral authority considers the matter.

And while that withdrawal is a small victory for Tunis, one has to question, for the umpteenth time, what type of due diligence, if any, was performed by Coutau-Bégarie before agreeing to accept these items for the auction, what if any checks occurred at the EU border when these objects arrived on Europe's shore, and what documentation was provided, if any at all, to Coutau-Bégarie by the individuals selling the family property. 

Stands to reason that if an auction house has time to develop length object descriptions for one hundred and fourteen items, photograph them, and then design a sales catalog to highlight them, uploading the PDF to their website, they might also have the time to ring up the authorities in Tunisia to ask about the legitimacy of the objects being consigned.  

June 5, 2020

Virtual restitutions in the age of Coronavirus and Australian bush fires


On 27 November 2019 the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison formally announced that as a result of criminal law proceedings underway in India and the United States against New York art dealer Subhash Kapoor, Australia would be voluntarily returning three culturally significant sculptures to India.  Five days later, on 2 December 2019 the Australian Government's Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications - Office for the Arts announced that the three artworks would be formally given back to the Indian authorities during the Prime Minister's visit to India, in January 2020.

Prime Minister Morrison was scheduled to travel to India on 13 January 2020 for bilateral meetings between Australia and India, at the invitation of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.  The pair planned to hand over the artworks and discuss the global economy before Morrison headed on to other meetings in Japan.  Those plans, however, fell by the wayside as Australia battled for control over the country's raging bush fires which continued unabated until mid-February, a result of the country's prolonged drought.

The next hiccup to the scheduled meeting and handover was the world-encompassing epidemic, the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). 


Months later, opting for safety and security over politics, as coronavirus cases in India saw a record single-day jump of 9,304, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi held their first-ever “Bilateral Virtual Summit” on the 4th of June 2020.  This occasion, focused on comprehensive strategic partnerships between India and Australia, and was the occasion to allow Morrison to virtually hand over the pair of 15th century, Vijayanagar dynasty door guardians (Darapala) from Tamil Nadu, and a 6-8th century sandstone statue of the serpent king (Nagaraja) from Rajasthan or Madhya Pradesh, in India.



Speaking with S. Vijay Kumar of the India Pride Project, a volunteer organization involved in documenting and tracking stolen Indian artifacts, Mr. Kumar had this to say about the current restitutions:

"The return of the two door guardians, bought by the NGA for USD 495,000 in August 2005 and stolen from Tamil Nadu and the Nagaraja purchased for USD 337,500 in April 2006 from Madhya Pradesh will bring closure to an eight year struggle with the National Gallery of Australia which started with us, along with Mr. Jason Felch exposing the robber photos, showing the objects freshly looted against a vesti and lungi background. We also proved the fake provenance of the certificates issued by Art of Past for these purchases way back in 2015. 

The returns are important as they provide much-needed impetus to the sagging criminal trial of Subhash Kapoor by exposing the nexus between him and his associates. The Nagaraja was smuggled out of India sometime in 1999 by the mastermind of the illicit trafficking network in India who went by the codename "SHANTOO" who we now know is Ranjit Kanwar (but whom has yet to be arrested/traced by Indian law enforcement) but more importantly of the Prakash brothers who ran IndoNepal - who smuggled the two door guardians out of India sometime before 2002.  

These individuals have been named in the case filing on Kapoor in NYC Aug 2019 by US authorities, providing graphic details of how these stolen artefacts  are cleaned by intermediaries - in this case Solomon who has been since charged with abetting this crime for cleaning and removing any trace of dirt, etc from the Nagaraja and also how Subhash Kapoor used an old typewriter and some old stationery to fool the largest public museum in Australia.


The two Dwarapalas will be sent to India's Idol wing of Tamil Nadu which has registered a theft case related to the pair.  The Serpent King will initially go to the Red Fort Archaeological Museum located in the Mumtaz Mahal of the Red Fort in Delhi.

Kumar, Felch, and arts reporter Michaela Boland have long pushed for the examination and return of suspect Kapoor pieces, imploring the NGA to look closely at the provenance of all works in the museum's collection which were purchased by this dealer or his affiliates.  Extradited to India in July 2012, Kapoor remains incarcerated at Tiruchirappalli Central Prison awaiting the conclusion of his trial in India.  Afterward, the 70-year-old would likely be extradited to the United States to face 86 felony counts for allegedly looting $145 million in antiquities over the last 50 years.

By:  Lynda Albertson

June 4, 2020

Revisiting the UK's Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act of 2003

The Torbryan rood screen
This Friday ARCA reviews one of the few successful cases of prosecution using the UK's Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act of 2003.

Christopher Cooper was an unemployed, amateur antique dealer in the United Kingdom, who is known to have targeted unsecured places of worship, stealing a range of ecclesiastic objects, including bibles, crucifixes, Anglo Saxon carvings and even the top and bottom of a stone coffin from St Mary’s Church in Foy in Herefordshire - a heavy relic he pilfered over the course of two separate raids, as the first went unnoticed.  

In addition to stealing from vulnerable religious institutions, Cooper was discovered to have manufactured his own "antiques," passing them off to his customers as genuine, often defaced as historic relics.  Some of the objects he was charged with selling included historic religious statues, stained glass, stone coffins, crosses, baptismal font plugs, and rare bibles. 

Over the course of his three-year crime spree, it was reported that Cooper pocketed from up to £150,000 from the proceeds of his criminal activity, brokering the sale of stolen objects via at least two purportedly unsuspecting individuals, whom he never met face-to-face, as he used a third party for the delivery of the pieces to maintain some semblance of distance from their apparent sale. 

Partial Chronology of events in this case:

September 2011 - September 2014
Posing as an ordinary visitor, Cooper targeted quiet churches throughout England and Wales where his activity would remain largely unnoticed, in some cases even until after his arrest. 

2012 
Entering Coombes Parish Church, in Lancing, Cooper stole a 13th-century Lancing corpus of Jesus Christ which had been fixed to a crucifix 12 feet above the ground. The 10 cm gilded copper figure of Christ, thought to have been crafted in Limoges, France, was first recovered in the churchyard at Coombes Parish Church in 1877, likely the victim of the cultural upheaval that at one point splintered Catholic Europe and spurred a revival of iconoclasm. 

2013 
Cooper hacked a pair of 15th-century decorative oak panels out of the Torbryan rood screen which divides the nave from the altar area of the church at the Holy Trinity church at Torbryan in Devon. These historic panels were one of only a few of the 40 panels which once stretched the width of the church. Like the Lancing corpus, these decorative panels also had survived the iconoclasm of the reformation in the 16th century and were painted with the images of St Victor of Marseilles and St Margaret of Antioch.

1535 Myles Coverdale Bible:
The First Bible Printed in the English
This same year, Cooper also offered a rare Coverdale bible to an unnamed collector for £18,000, apparently before he had time to steal the object, or perhaps never intending to send anything at all. Concerned that the object purchased and paid for had not been sent, the buyer informed the Metropolitan Police and filed a report with the art and antiques unit.     

Around this same period, the Metropolitan Police received information from HM Revenue and Customs relating to the illegal importation of a stuffed gorilla's head by an individual in South London, an object subject to CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. As a result of their subsequent search of that individual's property, a number of ecclesiastic objects were recovered, including the two oak church panels which had been stolen from Holy Trinity Church in Devon, as well as a heart stone from another religious institution. 

When questioned by the police, the buyer of the gorilla head and religious panels admitted that he had bought ecclesiastic items online from a man from Herefordshire.  Based on these accumulative leads, a nationwide police initiative, into the organised theft and black market trade of religious and church artifacts in England and Wales, code-named "Icarus," began.

January 2015
Eighteen months later, the investigation "Icarus" which brought in the West Mercia Police, is headed up by Detective Inspector Martyn Barnes, with the support of the Met's Art and Antiques unit in London. 

The West Mercia Police arrest Cooper under suspicion of a series of church thefts carried out in a number of areas including: in Warwickshire, Herefordshire, Ross on Wye, Ledbury, Monmouth, Abergavenny, Brecon, south and north Wales, Warwick, Cirencester, Kent, Suffolk, and Oxfordshire Sussex, Essex, and Swindon. While not originally cooperative, police recovered a number of stolen objects found in Cooper's possession, including historic stonework, friezes, statues, paintings, brasses, misericords, stained glass, and first edition King James Bibles which Cooper had stolen from churches across Wales, replacing them with modern editions. 

While conducting a search of his property, police also recovered a notebook that was found to contain a list of churches and coding used in documentation of his crime spree. Perhaps realising he had been undone, Cooper eventually cooperated with law enforcement, and drew a sketch of the 13th-century Lancing corpus, pinpointing Coombes Church on a road map as the site where he stole the cross ornament. 

Shortly thereafter Cooper was initially charged with theft under the Theft Act 1968, as well as fraud, for selling fakes and stolen property online. Later he was charged via the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003 which is reserved for the acquisition of cultural property and makes it an offense to acquire, dispose of, import or export 'tainted' cultural objects, or agree or arrange to do so; and for connected purposes. 

Given his initial cooperation in identifying sites where he had stolen objects, Cooper was released on bail on his own recognizance until September 2015. 

6 May 2016 
Cooper pled guilty to seven charges of theft, two charges of fraud and one charge of dealing in tainted cultural items at Hereford Crown Court. In total, he admitted to 37 thefts from churches throughout England and Wales, 30 of which he asked the Court to be taken into consideration (TIC). 

Cooper was sentenced to three years in prison for dealing in tainted antiquities, for each of seven charges of theft, set to run concurrently. Cooper was also given an additional eight months imprisonment for the two charges of fraud.   In total, he was scheduled to spend just three years and seven months in prison. 

As part of his sentencing, Cooper was also issued with a POCA (Proceeds of Crime Act) order, which means he has to repay the amount of money owed to his duped clients when he is able to do so.

Christopher Cooper's sentencing made West Mercia Police the first UK police force in the country to secure a conviction using the very carefully worded Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003.  Yet he was the only individual charged for his involvement in this criminal activity.  None of the purchasers, who willingly purchased material from him without concern for the object's origins, were ever publically revealed.

On the books, it has been difficult to convict art thieves and their collaborators in the UK of dealing in tainted cultural objects under the special-focused 2003 act. Culprits directly involved in a theft are more often charged using the broader charge of theft. 

Art crime offenses such as handling stolen good, in both cases require proof of dishonestly, a technicality that does not encourage suspect resellers and colluding buyers to ask probing questions as part of their due diligence process when acquiring cultural objects that likely have an illicit pedigree.  This need for plausible deniability serves to disincentivise buyers from probing too deeply, when seeking to establish the legitimacy of a purchase, as accumulating too much evidence, which could be used to establish dishonesty or collusion in a crime and earmark them as known handlers of stolen goods, could hold these individuals accountable, while a simpler "I didn't know" often makes it more difficult for law enforcement to prove coinvolvement, and to make charges stick.

By Lynda Albertson



Sources used for this article.

Cahal Milmo. 2016. ‘How a Gorilla Skull Helped Snare Britain’s Most Prolific Church Thief’. News. INews - JPIMedia Publications Ltd. 13 May 2016. https://inews.co.uk/news/prolific-church-thief-generation-finally-jailed-538372.

Clarke, Paul J. 2016. ‘Minutes Annual Meeting 17th May 2016 – Peterchurch Parish Council’. https://peterchurchparishcouncil.org.uk/minutes-annual-meeting-17th-may-2016/.

Connell, James. 2016. ‘CRIME FILES: Prolific Church Raider Ends up behind Bars’. Malvern Gazette, 10 May 2016. https://www.malverngazette.co.uk/news/18438621.crime-files-prolific-church-raider-ends-behind-bars/.

Herman, Alexander. 2016. ‘Conviction at Last under 2003 Act’. Blog. Institute of Art and Law (blog). 11 May 2016. https://ial.uk.com/1448-2/.

Morris, Steven. 2016. ‘Antique Dealer Who Plundered Churches for Profit Jailed | UK News | The Guardian’. 10 May 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/10/antique-dealer-plundered-churches-for-profit-jailed-christopher-cooper.
West Mercia Police. 2015. ‘West Mercia Police - Images Releases of Church Items Recovered in Operation Icarus’. June 2015. https://www.westmercia.police.uk/OperationIcarus.

Morris, Steven, and Maev Kennedy. 2015. ‘Stolen 15th-Century Torbryan Church Icons Recovered by Police’. The Guardian, 19 May 2015, sec. Art and design. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/19/stolen-15th-century-torbryan-church-icons-recovered-by-police.

Oldham, Jeanette.. 2016. ‘Church Raider Jailed after Stealing Priceless Relics, Including Ancient COFFIN - Birmingham Live’. 6 May 2016. https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/church-raider-jailed-after-stealing-11295721.

Oldham, Jeanette. 2016. ‘Crooked Antiques Dealer Jailed for Three Years for Stealing Priceless Relics from Churches’. Coventry Telegraph, 9 May 2016. https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/crooked-antiques-dealer-jailed-three-11305398.

May 19, 2020

Prosecutors file a civil forfeiture complaint for the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet which they say was looted from Iraq.

The Gilgamesh dream tablet, Iraq, c. 1600 BCE
while on display at Museum of the Bible

“Strange things have been spoken, why does your heart speak strangely? The dream was marvelous but the terror was great; we must treasure the dream whatever the terror.”  ― The Epic of Gilgamesh, N.K. Sanders translation. 
Authorities in the United States have filed a civil forfeiture complaint for a 1600 BCE cuneiform tablet featuring a dream sequence from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Acting as the Plaintiff in the case, the US authorities brought an action in rem for the tablet pursuant to 19 U.S.C. § 1595a(c)(1)(A).  Under this section, US law authorizes the forfeiture of any "merchandise" that is "introduced or attempted to be introduced into the United States contrary to law." In this case, that's when it is believed that the property was stolen in a foreign country and imported into the United States illegally.  

In the complaint, Special Agent John Paul Labbat with the United States Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations, cited that the object was stolen Iraqi property introduced into the United States contrary to 18 U.S.C. § 2314, the stolen property act.  This act serves as an independent basis for the forfeiture of any stolen property that moves in interstate or foreign commerce and which is utilized whether the object in question was stolen overseas or inside the United States.

The ancient clay object, originally part of a larger six-column tablet, contains seventy-four lines of Middle Babylonian cuneiform text, and is known to be one of only thirty known surviving fragments from the Epic of Gilgamesh created during the old and middle Babylonian periods.  Written almost 4,000 years ago, the Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest known literary works in the world. The earliest parts of the poem were first discovered in the ruins of the library of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal, in Nineveh, Iraq in 1853. 

Based upon the facts as set out in the Verified Complaint in Rem, on July 30, 2014, Hobby Lobby wired $1,674,000 to an unnamed auction house as payment for the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, having purchased the artifact for donation or display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC.  This was the same year that the company's fundamentalist president, Steve Green, persuaded the United States Supreme Court that it deserved a religious exemption from a federal requirement under which employers in the country are made to provide their workers with access to contraceptives.  It is also the same month that the Egyptian Exploration Society gave Dirk Obbink an ultimatum: cut ties with the Green family or lose his editorship of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, several fragments of which are now part of a separate ongoing investigation into another illegal sale in the United Kingdom.

Three months earlier, in April 2014 Manchester-based papyrologist Roberta Mazza had already published a blog post after visiting the Green's exhibition Verbum Domini II in Rome, Italy.  There, Professor Mazza recognized that another ill-advised Green purchase, a papyrus fragment of the Coptic codex of Galatians 2:2-4, 5-6, was one which had earlier been identified by Brice Jones and Dorothy L. King as having passed through the hands of a middleman trafficker on eBay, a gentleman going by the pseudonym Ebuyerrrrr, Yasasgroup, and later Mixantik.  As the investigations into the Green's buying habits progressed, Mazza, would be integral in determining that the Turkish middleman was Yakup Ekşioğlu, a name kept discreetly amongst researchers while investigations were undergoing.

Not long after the payment for the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet was finalized, the firm affiliated with the sale shipped the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet to their New York branch and then arranged for one of their representatives to hand-carry the tablet to Hobby Lobby in Oklahoma City, in order to avoid incurring a New York sales tax. The cuneiform tablet was subsequently transferred to the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC, where it drew concerns with one of the Museum's curators, in the lead up to the museum's grand opening. This unnamed curator queried the parties involved in the object's history post-sale, looking for evidence that would establish the artifact's legitimacy; an act of due diligence that should have been done by the prospective buyer before the tablet was purchased, and not after.  Those involved were anything but helpful.

This likely explains one of the reasons why the cuneiform tablet, once on display on the 4th floor of the DC museum in the History of the Bibles Galleries, was displayed with no provenance information whatsoever.

On 24 September 2019, the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet was seized as part of this civil investigation.  As the complaint released demonstrates, the importance of export documentation, for potential owners and dealers, or the lack thereof is a useful tool for researchers, law enforcement, and customs agents who monitor and prevent the trafficking of cultural property, none of which was remotely in keeping with this particular object.

But where was the Dream Tablet before? 

As background to the case, the US document cites that the tablet was first seen by an unnamed antiquities dealer in 2001 on the floor of a London apartment belonging to antiquities dealer Ghassan Rihani originally from Irbid in northern Jordan.

Prior to Rihani's death as well as after, a substantial portion of his "collection" of Iraqi objects began appearing on the London ancient art market. Many were believed to have been illicitly exported out of Iraq during the Gulf War following the 2003 invasion of Iraq and then recycled as being part of the not well documented Rihani family collection, something his son has denied in an interview with the New York Times.

By March/April 2003 the same dealer returned to London with a cuneiform expert and again viewed the tablet, this time with members of Rihani's family.  It is at this visit, where the dealer agreed to purchase the cuneiform table along with other items for a total of $50,530.  These items were subsequently mailed back to the United States and sold onward to two other dealers in ancient art for $50,000 along with a preliminary translation of the inscription.

By March 2007, false provenance documents had been created which omitted any mention of Rihani or the United Kingdom transaction.  Instead, the would-be provenance documentation proclaimed that the tablet had been purchased at a 1981 Butterfield & Butterfield auction in San Francisco, listed as LOT 1503.  All of which was blatantly untrue, as was the claim that the tablet had been deaccessioned from a small museum.

The cuneiform table would eventually make its way into the hands of Michael Sharpe, who published the object in his Rare & Antiquated Books catalog, where the object's constructed pedigree took a back seat to it's highlighted importance.



Like many cases before it, the multiple transactions surrounding the sales of the stolen Gilgamesh Dream Tablet reflects the inadequacy of the due diligence performed by intermediary dealers, the auction house, and the Green family themselves.  A simple check of the Butterfield & Butterfield auction records would have noted that LOT 1503 does not match the description of a terracotta cuneiform tablet from Iraq.  That alone should have given someone reason to pause.

At best, all of these dealers' behavior, the auction house's behavior and the collector's continued nonchalant attitude towards the object agreed to he purchase should be characterized as negligent. At worst, it shows the complicity of market actors, including those anonymously helping law enforcement post-facto, in prioritizing profits and plausible deniability as a masquerade for stewardship and collecting ethics.

As a result of this case, never shy Hobby Lobby has deflected its own ethical responsibilities towards due diligence by filing suit against Christie's, alleging fraud and breach of warranty in connection with the private treaty sale allegedly after the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet's provenance failed to stack up. This move confirms the auction powerhouse as the intermediary auction house, unnamed in the civil forfeiture complaint. That case has been listed as Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. v. Christie's Inc. (1:20-cv-02239) to be heard in the Eastern District of New York and names Georgie Aitken, Head of the Antiquities Department at Christie's in London from 2009-2016 and Margaret Ford, the Senior Director, International Head of Group, Books and Science at Christie's.

In closing, it is interesting to note that in the past Christie's has voiced a willingness to work closely with law enforcement agencies and ministries of culture to resolve issues when suspect antiquities passing through their organization, but reading the emails detailed in the civil forfeiture complaint for this cuneiform tablet show acting employees of the firm being anything but that. Instead, Christie's appears to have been trying to extract itself from the difficult situation it found itself in, having failed to so their advance homework prior to accepting the object for consignment or at any point up to the final sale.

Yet guarding our past for the future, is also going to be a tough sell for the Oklahoma-based retailer/donor.  In 2017 Hobby Lobby was fined $3 million after federal authorities alleged that the firm bought thousands of historical artifacts that were smuggled out of Iraq.  In 2019 the Museum of the Bible deaccessioned and restituted a number of stolen EES papyrus fragments removed illegally from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri housed at the Sackler Library in Oxford and in 2020 the museum relinquished 11,500 antiquities to the Iraqi and Egyptian governments, which had been acquired with a lack reliable provenance, or ownership histories.

Then there is that Galatians fragment Dr. Mazza has been asking about for years now, as well as many other pieces, have been tied back to Dr. Dirk Obbink and his private antiquities enterprises. 

At the time of the last restitution Mr. Green stated:

“One area where I fell short was not appreciating the importance of the provenance of the items I purchased.” 

One would question just how many legal entanglements it will take before Mr. Green starts to acknowledge that he is a significant contributor to the problem and not merely an innocent victim.  His failure to have engaged in serious due diligence of the artifacts he has purchased has already caused the Museum of the Bible to suffer by their own hands.  Likewise, due diligence of looted antiquities, especially those that could be from conflict-based countries, must be meaningful and not superficially plausible, in the furtherance of a sale's commission.  Partially-documented histories in an object's collection background, do not necessarily always point to fresh looting or illegal export but when an antiquity's background looks murky, as is the case with this important cuneiform tablet, the art market and wealthy donor collectors need to step up their game, by no longer participating in the laundering and by allowing researchers access to past sales details so that wrongs can be righted.

By:  Lynda Albertson

May 6, 2020

INTERPOL, Europol and World Customs Organization joint investigation produce results.


Interpol has issued a preliminary announcement on Operations Athena II and Pandora IV. 

A total of 300 coordinated investigations took place, spanning 103 countries. All of which focused on the dismantlement of international networks of art and antiquities traffickers.  In total some 101 suspects were arrested.

These results were achieved during the global Operation Athena II, led by the World Customs Organization (WCO) and INTERPOL, which was carried out in synchronization with the Europe-focused Operation Pandora IV coordinated by the Spanish Civil Guard (Guardia Civil) and Europol in the framework of EMPACT(European multidisciplinary platform against criminal threats). 

Europol, INTERPOL and the WCO each played key roles in implementing facilitating information exchange and by providing analytical and operational support.  

The footage coming from the Spanish Civil Guard (Guardia Civil) is pretty impressive. 


As can be seen by the Roman numerals after these investigations, these are not the first coordinated initiatives designed to target criminal activity related to art.  For several years now, law enforcement and customs has worked together to inspect auction houses, art galleries, museums and private residences, as well as sea ports, airports and border crossing points in search of illicit material.

According to the EUROPOL press release more than 19,000 objects have been recovered in the course of some 300 investigations.  Seizures are reported to include ancient coins, archaeological objects, ceramics, historical weapons, paintings, and fossils as well as metal detectors.

April 30, 2020

Remembering the long returned Orpheus Taming the Beasts Mosaic

Photograph from the Sanliurfa Prosecutor’s Office
which led to the restitution of the Orpheus Mosaic
The city of Şanlıurfa, modern-day Urfa, is situated in the Taurus Mountains of southern Anatolia, where the east-west highway from Zeugma on the Euphrates to where the Tigris meets with the north-south route from Somaysāṭ.  Known also as Edessa in history, the city is also referred to as Admi in Assyrian cuneiform tablets from the 7th century BCE,  Ōrhāy in Syriac sources, and as ar-Ruhā in Arabic texts.  Its location is important as the city stood along what was once the trade route upon which silk and spices flowed from China and India through to Asia Minor.

Upper Mesopotamia and Syria in the early Christian period,
showing Edessa within the Kingdom of Osroene
It was here, for a brief period, that the Kingdom of Osroene, a vassal state of the Parthian and Roman Empires, created their own original mosaics, some of which help us date them precisely because their makers tellingly embedded the year of their creation within their designs. These mosaics, which use the Seleucid calendar, were created from the end of the 2nd century through the middle of the 3rd century CE and have characteristics that make them identifiable to this specific region of modern-day Turkey.

Many of the mosaics which have been discovered in the area of Şanlıurfa originally lined the flooring of archaeological cave tombs in the city.  Some have been discovered during the building of current-day structures, as modern development encroached over the city's historic past.   Unfortunately, and despite their initial recording, a number of known Edessa mosaics were subsequently destroyed. Or, as is the case with this long particular tale, taken halfway around the globe illegally, far from the city and its ancient inhabitants, whose history illustrates once paid deep respect for their dead. 

For some of the lost mosaics, only photos, or drawings, and written academic references remain.  Others, like two fragments from the region's Tripod Mosaic, later surfaced on the Beirut antiquities market, taken there sometime after their initial looting.  

This is the story of just one of the lost Şanlıurfa mosaics. 

In the 1950s and 1960s Judah Benzion Segal, (otherwise known as J. B. Segal) visited and studied at Urfa. A widely respected scholar of Syriac and Aramaic languages, his explorations were funded by the University of London and the Pilgrim Trust Fund.  Before Segal began recording the epigraphic remains he found from ancient Edessa, only three of the four mosaic floors in Şanlıurfa had been documented.  One of those is the Aphtuha mosaic, which is now in the Istanbul Archeology Museums. Two of the others are missing.

In total Segal would go on to document a total of nine mosaic floors in the city's cave tombs dating from the first three centuries CE.  Several of these he visited during his second season in Urfa, in the summer of 1956, which he wrote about shortly thereafter.

The importance of these mosaics tells us much about the rich traditions of Edessa's westward-looking elite during the Osroene Kingdom (132 BCE - 242 CE).  They were a population whose funerary practices were sometimes known to intermingle with tales of Greco-Roman mythology, yet still proudly added touches of their local identity.  Strikingly, in paying homage to their loved ones, they laid their dead to rest with inscriptions in the local dialect, a clue from the past which helps us identify these works of art.

Orpheus Mosaic identified by Segal
One of the mosaics documented by Segal is pictured to the left, in a black and white photograph.  The face of the principal character has been torn away at some earlier point in history.  This mosaic depicts the Greek poet Orpheus, and while the entire mosaic is also known to have been lost, this antiquity is not the subject of this article and serves merely as our story's preamble.

By the 1970s the city of Şanlıurfa's mosaics had suffered greatly. Due in part to neglect, theft, or destruction, it was commonly stated that only a few of the ancient floor mosaics survived in their city of origin, including two preserved in private homes.  A third mosaic and fragments of a fourth had been relocated to Istanbul.  The bulk of the rest of the known mosaics had been destroyed or carted off.  This is the story of one of them.  Or to be clearer, this is as much of the story as I have been able to piece together from a variety of sources, and yet the saga leaves many unanswered questions.

We begin in 1998, when Turkish authorities have reported that they received an unexpected bit of intel into the looting of a previously unknown Odessa mosaic; a clue that wrote the first known passages of the plunder of "Ikinci Orpheus Mozaiği," or what some have called the "Second Orpheus Mosaic."

That year, a customer, perhaps one of the looters, dropped off film to be processed at a photo shop in the city of Şanlıurfa.  The patron then forgot to pick up the film/prints, or perhaps in hindsight, decided that it is wiser to abandon them.  One of the images captured by the eye of the camera detailed an Osroene Kingdom mosaic in situ, its decorative red ocher and black frieze bordering a central element that depicts a scene from the fateful love of Orpheus of Thrace.

The mosaic, like the earlier one documented by Segal, showed the son of Apollo, enchanting a group of ferocious animals with the magical sweetness of his lyre.  As the wild beasts gather around him mesmerized, his playing subdues their innate hostilities. In the upper left, near the head of our instrument strumming Greek hero, is a short, three-lined inscription.

The photo's content also gives a clue that something is afoot.  Resting atop the nearly-perfect mosaic is an incriminating can of Turkish adhesive, a thief's tool.  The metal canister is photographed sitting strategically over the single area of the mosaic's design where some of the tesserae are missing.   Perhaps the can was positioned there to allow the photographer to capture the remaining parts of the mosaic's design or after the looter(s) had set to work.

At some point in the process, the thieves would use the can of sticky fixative, to apply a thin coat over the top of the mosaic's tesserae.  Once applied, the next step would be to cover the entire artwork with cheesecloth or another thin fabric, to give the workmen a flexible, yet sturdy, adhesion to rip up the mosaic from its foundation.  After that, the mosaic would be rolled up and carried off, in the same way as a rolled-up Anatolian carpet.

Seeing the subject of the photo, and probably wanting no problems with the police, the shop owner turned the incriminating evidence to the local authorities.  At some point later, Turkish authorities would postulate that evidence pointed to the mosaic being taken from the Kalkan Neighborhood of Şanlıurfa.  Unfortunately, I have found no reference as to when, or how, this theory was arrived at.  Without further leads, the investigation apparently ground to a halt for a period of time.

The mosaic surfaces one year later, on the art market in the United States

On 9 December 1999, the mosaic appeared with Christie's Auction in New York, identified as Lot 388.  By then its beautiful bordering frieze had been cut away, leaving just the lyre-playing Greek bard surrounded by his animals.  In the span of just one year, the fixative used to uproot the mosaic from its findspot had been carefully eliminated and the mosaic polished up; made ready for purchase on the U.S. ancient art market. 

Christie's listed the mosaic in its 1999 antiquities sale catalog as a Roman Marble Mosaic, Eastern Mediterranean.  It dated the artwork as having been created in 204 A.D.  Not surprisingly for that period, the object's Lot description gave no provenance information whatsoever.


In addition to its striking lack of ownership history, Christie's gets an epic fail for Rand and Becker's translation of the mosaic's epigraphy, and for calculating its age.  At the time of the auction, in 1999, neither man listed as having contributed to the translation had completed their studies.  Michael Rand was studying Jewish liturgical piyyut composed mostly in Hebrew with some Aramaic and Adam Becker was working on a second MA, in Classics.  

The pair translated the small inscription in the field to the left of Orpheus incorrectly as:

"Son of Zagrios, the player, is playing."   

In actuality, we would learn later that this inscription gives the name of the creator and identifies his craft.  The lower inscription was likewise jumbled and incomplete, as was someone's interpretation of the Seleucid calendar.  This error put Christie's dating of the mosaic off by ten years.

Interestingly, the auction house's interpretation failed to document that the inscription was written in Estrangelo, the earliest form of Syriac, and the lingua franca of the peoples of ancient Edessa.  This alone would have given prospective buyers a stronger clue as to the mosaic's origins, something the translators themselves or the auction house either failed to comprehend, didn't value, or intentionally omitted when preparing the write-up for the ancient object.

Meanwhile, Turkish authorities state that they tried to block this sale at Christie's in 1999 on the grounds that the mosaic was illicit and had been removed illegally from the ancient city of Edessa, modern-day Şanlıurfa but I found no opensource evidence to back up this later press statement within searchable records in the public's domain.

In any case, with or without the objection of Turkey, the auction moved forward regardless, despite the auction house's faux pas in art history.  When the hammer dropped, the mosaic had sold for US$ 85,000

Given the title of "Orpheus Taming Wild Animals," the mosaic's acquirer was the Dallas Museum of Art. Listed in the DMA's February 2012 catalog with accession number DEACC.1999.305, it was purchased via gifting funds from of David T. Owsley and the Alconda-Owsley Foundation, along with two anonymous donors, in honor of Nancy B. Hamon.  Although Owsley presently lives in New York, he is a prominent collector of antiquities and long-time donor/patron of the DMA whose donations have on occasion been questioned.

From that point onward, the second Orpheus mosaic would remain quietly on public view without garnering much in the way of further attention until 2006, when its inscriptions are correctly translated and published by Professor John F. Healey of the University of Manchester.  It is in the Autumn of that year that the academic penned his article on "A New Syriac Mosaic Inscription" for the October issue of the Journal of Semitic Studies. 

In his article, Healey highlights the correct editio princeps of the inscription written in Estrangelo that Christie's translators had botched.  The first, to the left of Orpheus, gives the name of the creator and identifies his craft stating:

"Bargased, mosaic-maker, laid the mosaic"   

The second, lower inscription reads:

"In the month of Nisan in the year five hundred five I, Pāpā, son of Pāpā, made for myself this chamber of repose, for myself and for my children and for my heirs. Blessed be whoever sees and gives blessing." 

The Seleucid date of 505 translates to 194 CE.  The month of Nīsān translates to March/April.  This dated the mosaic a full ten years earlier than Christie's had recorded it, and more importantly, makes this artwork the earliest dated Syriac mosaic known.  While the article itself may pay-walled, limiting its access, the fully viewable abstract for Healy's paper clearly lists the location of the mosaic as the Dallas Museum of Art.  Given the artifact's newfound importance as the earliest known mosaic written in Estrangelo, it remains to be seen why Turkish authorities did not pick up on this evaluation or the mosaic's location, in order to begin direct overtures with the Dallas museum regarding the suspect object in their collection. Perhaps this was because the article was written in English, or perhaps it was the fact that texts on epigraphic remains were not on anyone's radar.  Whatever the case, this illustrates the disconnect that can occur between academia and law enforcement which when combined can be useful in identifying suspect objects in various known and published collections.

The next academic red flag to be waved was in Turkish. 

From 28 May-1 June 2007 Turkish archaeologist and Ahi Evran University lecturer Barış Salman attended a Research and Results meeting in Kocaeli, Turkey with his country's Culture and Tourism Ministry - General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums.  There Salman gave a presentation on his findings regarding the life and death of the peoples from the Abgar Royal Period, as interpreted through their mosaics from the Region of Osroene (Şanlıurfa).

In 2008 Salman followed up that meeting with a Turkish-language paper summarizing his presentation at the meeting which at last garnered some attention in Turkey. In his paper, Salman documented that only a small portion of the discovered mosaics from Şanliurfa had been properly recorded or brought to the city's museum or Istanbul over the course of the last century.  The scholar also noted that despite some archival photos and drawings documenting some of the mosaics identified from the 1950s onward, a number of these ancient mosaics had been lost or damaged.  Salman's paper also went on to emphasize that some of Turkey's mosaics had been secreted out of the country and taken abroad.

Salman cited the presence of Abgar Royal Period mosaics at the Louvre Museum in Paris, at the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide, Australia, a Japanese Museum, and in private collections in France.  He also specifically mentioned the "Orpheus Taming Wild Animals" on public view at the Dallas Museum of Art, and cited Professor Healey's 2006 translation of the mosaic.

In 2008 Salman also wrote a second paper,  this time in English, again explaining his concerns about his country's mosaic losses.

It wasn't until American art Historian Maxwell L. Anderson replaced Pitman as the museum's Eugene McDermott Director in early 2012 that anyone at the Texas museum showed much of an interest in exploring the provenance of suspect acquisitions within their collection.

Ushering in a new era, Anderson started his reign by scrupulously emailing General Pasquale Muggeo, then heading up the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, and Maurizio Fiorill, the Avvocato Generale dello Stato for Italy on 27 January 2012 alerting them to the presence of three works sold to the museum in 1998 by antiquities dealer Edoardo Almagià.   Almagià was concerning as his name had already been attached to other tainted objects found in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art and Princeton University Art Museum.

The objects Anderson was concerned about were two Etruscan funerary shields from the 6th century BCE and a Volute krater by the Underworld Painter from the 4th century BCE which depicts the man-bull deity Acheloos.  U.S. Customs officials had raided Almagià's New York apartment, in 2006 confiscating photographs, documents, and archaeological material, and the director, perhaps to avoid the scandals that had already befallen other museums, was being proactive about contacting the Italian authorities regarding artifacts within the DMA collection which were proving to be concerning.

By March 2012 (the earliest date I have found via a Wayback Machine save), Dorothy King and the Lootbusters website had drawn attention, to the English-speaking public about the serious problem of mosaic thefts from Turkey, though not specifically the theft of this particular Orpheus mosaic.  King's blog and the Lootbusters' website both pointed to a page that the Turkish Ministry of Culture had published which documented a series of identified mosaics known to be missing from Şanlıurfa Province, including the Orpheus 1, without the face.  The original Turkish ministry link of these identified mosaics and their descriptions can be viewed here.

It is sometime in March that Dorothy King emailed Anderson voicing her concerns about the museum's Orpheus mosaic.*

If the Turkish authorities were, as was later stated, already working on the theft of the second Orpheus mosaic since 1998 when the looted photo was first turned in to the authorities, as well as in 2000 when the mosaic was auctioned at Christie's then why wasn't this mosaic included in this list of missing pieces when Turkey published its detailed alert?

In March of 2012, after Kings contact, Anderson wrote to the Embassy of Turkey stating he did so after having viewed the Turkish Ministry of Culture website with its series of mosaics known to have been illegally removed from Edessa after the 1950s. One of the objects in that list, the Orpheus Mosaic missing his face, which was discussed earlier, raised his concern. 

Speaking of the DMA's acquisition of its own Orpheus mosaic, in relation to the Republic of Turkey ministry web page, Anderson told the press:

"The mosaics included examples that were virtually identical to this one... and with the same Seriac inscription, specifically identifying the site from which the mosaic was obtained. And therefore, it raised questions for me."

Stylistically and iconographically, the DMA's Orpheus is similar to other Edessa mosaics. Specifically, the inscription is similar both in style and content to other Edessa mosaics as is the Estrangelo script which originates in Edessa. Other features typical of the area include the absence of depth to mosaics from that region's design, the light colors used, and the expression and facial features of the subjects. The date of the DMA's mosaic inscription also coincides precisely to the period of mosaic production in Edessa.

In explaining the chain of events with the Turkish authorities, Anderson would tellingly state in the New York Times:

"For whatever reason, they hadn’t found their way to the Christie’s catalog or to us."

Anderson's statement and the timing in which he gave them, again contradicts various Turkish press statements that the authorities in Turkey were aware of the auction at Christie's in 1999 or had paid heed to any of the academic articles written that identified where the mosaic ultimately landed.

By 7 June 2012 outrage over the thefts of Turkish mosaics had started to seriously simmer within the general public in Turkey.  It is around this point in time that Aktüel Archeology Magazine initiated a citizens' campaign to return the Edessa Mosaic located in the Dallas Museum of Art's collection.  In a series of articles and linking blog posts, readers are encouraged to complete an English-language petition to be addressed and sent to the Dallas museum administrators, likely not aware that a discussion with the Turkish authorities had been opened by the museum in the Spring.

Following Anderson's March embassy inquiry the Turkish authorities pulled all the pieces of the puzzle together and an investigation was (re)launched by the Şanlıurfa Chief Public Prosecutor's Office reviewing all of the collected evidence of the theft.  At this point, the previous evidence in the archives of the Attorney General's office, including the 1998 photograph taken by the smugglers before the mosaic's removal, became critical to the success of their investigation and ultimately to the objects forthcoming restitution.

The authorities in Turkey would then forward the museum director their copy of the incriminating photo and six experts, one of which was Barış Salman, weighed-in giving their expert opinions that the mosaic could only have come from within the territory of Turkey.  Faced with overwhelming and irrefutable proof that the mosaic had been looted, negotiations quickly got underway to deaccession the mosaic from the Dallas Museum of Art and to develop a memorandum of understanding covering bilateral cultural cooperation.  As part of this process, the agreement was carefully worded to say that the DMA had acquired the mosaic in good faith in accordance with the laws of the United States of America, and without knowledge of any issue as to its ownership or title.

On 3 December 2012, within this framework of mutual goodwill, the Director-General of Cultural Heritage and Museums for the Republic of Turkey O. Murat Suslu and DMA Director Anderson formally signed their memorandum of understanding in Dallas in the presence of Cemalettin Aydin, the consul general of Turkey in Houston.  With this MOU Turkey took legal possession of the mosaic, while also agreeing to future loan arrangements between the Texas museum and the Republic of Turkey.

On 6 December 2012 the mosaic was flown home to Turkey on Turkish Airlines and was soon exhibited within the Istanbul Archeology Museums Directorate. Later it was transferred, first to the Sanliurfa Museum, and in 2015, to its final home at the Haleplibahçe Mosaic Museum.

All of this seems to conclude our story with a happily ever after ending, wrapped in a pretty red bow of cultural diplomacy.  But is it really?  

What about the loose ends?

Much time has been spent applauding the museum’s "unwavering ethical stance" and the proactive work of Maxwell Anderson, as well as the investigative work of law enforcement in the Republic of Turkey.  Some lesser attention, at least in academia has been paid, to the textual scholars whose work contributed to raising the preliminary alarm bells that a mosaic, located in Texas, was suspect.  

Nothing, however, has been said about: 

--WHO Christie's dealt with in the purchase of or consignment of this mosaic? 

--WHO conserved the mosaic after its illicit removal?  As every step of the process: from removing the gauze facing, to cleaning away any remaining soil or lingering adhesive, to transferring the mosaic to a supportive backing, or to consolidating any loosened tesserae, would have involved someone professionally trained in working with mosaics. 

--WHY hasn't this restorer/conservator been identified, or come forward of their own accord, either when initially approached by someone with on the rolled-up antiquity, or afterward when the object gained notoriety as having been looted from Turkey? 

--WHY did the Dallas Museum of Art purchase/accept via donation a mosaic advertised with no provenance? Or if they were privy to additional documentation from Christie's not available to the public at the time of the sale, why not disclose what information led them to believe this purchase was legitimate?  

and lastly...

--WHY did it take Turkey a decade to put two and two together?  Despite having a smoking gun photo, academics citing the mosaic's pedigree and location in both English and Turkish, it (still) took a public initiative activated to look into the theft and the DMA director's subsequent contact with the embassy to finally bring things together. 

To me, this restitution is not celebration-worthy, but more a textbook example of just how frayed, disjointed and inefficient, efforts to identify looted property can be.    This is not a criticism, it just serves as a reminder of just how difficult it is to chase these pieces and how collaboration can and does facilitate restitutions. 

I will close this lengthy article with another mosaic inscription found in cave tombs in this area of Turkey.  One which states that the dead are watched over by the eyes of the gods and aptly reads:  

"I, Gayyu, daughter of Baršuma, made this grave for myself. Whoever comes here shall not remove my bones. Whoever does it shall not have the other world (afterlife) and Maralahe curses him"

I can only hope the gods are truly watching.

By:  Lynda Albertson

-----------------
*01 May 2020 - This article has been revised for clarity and to include a notation posted by Dorothy King on 30 April 2020 that she had contacted the Dallas Museum of Art Director Anderson in 2012 about concerns regarding the Orpheus mosaic in the museum's collection.
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Colledge 1994: Colledge, M., "Some Remarks on the Edessa Funerary Mosaics",
La Mosaïque Gréco-Romaine IV, Paris, 1994. s. 189-197. Association Internationale pour l’Étude de la Mosaïque Antique.

Drijvers, H. J. W., Old Syriac (Edessean) Inscriptions, Leiden,1972.

Drijvers, H.J.W and Healey, J.F., The Old Syriac Inscriptions of Edessa and Osrhoene, Leiden-Boston-Köln, 1999.

Güler, S. and Çelik, B., "Edessa Mozaikleri, Şanlıurfa Uygarlığın Doğduğu Şehir", A.C. Kürkçüoğlu, M. Akalın, S. S. Kürkçüoğlu,  E. Güler (ed.) 2002, 182–189.

Healey, J. F., "A New Syriac Mosaic Inscription", Journal of Semitic Studies 51-2, 2006, s. 313-327.

Salman, B., "2005 Yılı Şanlıurfa ve Adana Müzeleri Mozaik Çalışması", 24. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı, C: 1, Çanakkale, 2006, s. 513-532.

Segal, J. B., "New Mosaics from Edessa", Archaeology 12.3, 1959, s. 150-157.

Segal J. B., "New Syriac Inscriptions from Edessa", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 22.1, 1959, s. 23-40.

Segal, J. B., Edessa (Urfa) Kutsal Şehir (Çev. A. Arslan), İstanbul, 2002.