Category Archives: Papyri

Prices and provenance of papyri recently sold or for sale

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Collectors, who keep buying despite my many warnings, alerted me on the appearance of few papyri for sale.

A Coptic fragment, mislabeled as “Greek”, was auctioned in France last Sunday (picture below). Despite the absence of any reliable provenance, those who followed the sale reported that it went from 40 to over 800 euros.

Screenshot of lot 419 Coptic from the online catalogue of Métayer-Mermoz Maison de Ventes aux Enchères

The same circle of collectors report that one can still buy two papyri of the Byzantine period published in 1986 by Roger S. Bagnall (SB 18 13740 = TM 36298; and SB 18 13741 = TM 36283), on offer through the online shop of Hixenbaugh Ancient Art New York. Their price is apparently 30 times that paid for the Coptic scrap. The fragments’ provenance reads “Formerly with Dikran Kelekian, Paris, 1950s; subsequently in a New York private collection, acquired in 1983”.

Dikran G. Kelekian (1868–1951) was a renowned art collector and dealer, who opened galleries in New York, Paris and Cairo with his brothers (for a summary of his bio see here and here). The New York business passed to his son, Charles Dikran Kelekian, who died in 1982. In 1984, Harvard Art Museums accessioned a Coptic miniature codex bearing the Gospel of the Lots of Mary, coming as a gift from “Mrs Beatrice Kelekian, in memory of her late husband Charles Dikran Kelekian”. Dates and names related with the two Byzantine fragments and the Harvard codex seem to point at a same source, the Kelekian estate, but without documents this remains uncertain and of course uncertain is also where the papyri had been found in Egypt and how they came in the possession of Mr Kelekian.

The Harvard codex was published by AnneMarie Luijendijk in 2014 (Forbidden Oracles? The Gospel of the Lots of Mary).

If you wish to buy ancient papyri, consider donating them to a university papyrus collection or other institution in your country or in Egypt, before or after your death: your life is shorter than that of papyri, and you can’t trust your heirs, believe it or not those fragments can go wasted…

The Ilves papyri and their eBay Turkish origins

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About ten years ago, when I started looking at the Green papyrus collection, Rick Bonnie, an archaeologist based in Helsinki, became the more and more interested in a smaller and far less public collection of papyri and other manuscripts, the Finnish Ilves collection. Like Steve Green and his family, the owner of the Ilves collection established connections with scholars willing to research his manuscripts but unlike the Greens he wanted to remain anonymous – Ilves is a fantasy name (obviously, the experts who accepted to work for him know the man’s name and address, but the rest of us is left speculating over the mysterious label). Bonnie and I soon realized that the Ilves and Green collections had much in common, as they were both sourcing papyri from Turkish dealers operating through eBay and other means.

While Bonnie did not reach “Mr Ilves” in person, he became acquainted with his eBay identity. As papyrologists working for Ilves were fully aware that the collector had acquired some of his papyri through eBay sellers and published some of them in academic journals with details about their shady sources, Bonnie was able to cross-check eBay open access information and identified the Finnish account “cde789” as belonging to Mr Ilves. eBay allowed searching data that customers leave open access, so Bonnie analysed the transactions made by “cde789” as buyer: from 2003 to 2019, the collector made at least 463 acquisitions. (The same account was also mentioned in an open access article by Bob Kraft).

As Bonnie explains in a recent book chapter summarizing his finds, Mr Ilves mostly acquired from three eBay sellers: “mjgreyfarr”, “minnos2004” and “ebuyerrrrr”. The first account is linked with the sale of noted American dealer Bruce Ferrini’s manuscripts, following his financial troubles, while the other two are the eBay interfaces of two Turkish dealers who have sold (and possibly are still selling) hundreds papyrus fragments and other antiquities from Egypt and elsewhere since at least the early 2000s. Ebuyerrrrr (= Yakup Ekşioğlu) is particularly well known as I reported him to eBay and also to the Art and Antiques Unit of Metropolitan London Police back in 2016 and that made him upset. Among other things, Ekşioğlu sold hundreds of unprovenanced/illegal items to the Green collection, most notably the 26 New Sappho fragments belonging to the same ancient roll as the Brothers Poem Sappho papyrus. He is closely associated with the protagonists of the thefts and trading of the Egypt Exploration Society papyri discovered in 2019, as I will explain in my forthcoming book where the identity of the business behind minnos2004 will also be revealed.

You might wonder why I am telling this story, since it is well known and published already. I am repeating all this because one of the most prestigious series in papyrology, “Papyrologica Bruxellensia” printed by renown academic publisher Peeters, has accepted to host the publication of a catalog of 20 papyri from the Ilves collection, which were exhibited in August 2020 at the National Archives of Finland. The editors of the volume explain in the acquisition history section (pp. 9-10) that the “catalog comprises the manuscripts from the Ilves collection that, according to the present owner of the collection, were purchased from an antiquities dealer  in London in the late 1940s  by the grandfather of the owner, who was apparently introduced to the dealer by  Sir M. E. L. Mallowan, a professor at the University of London.” They think that Mr Ilves’ word suffices to prove that the papyri “would have arrived in  Finland before the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property ( effective 1972; ratified by Finland 1999).” But is the word of a collector who has bought hundreds papyrus fragments from eBay accounts operating illegally from Turkey enough for papyrologists to state that they have performed a careful provenance research ahead of study and publication, as required by current academic professional policies? Does due diligence just mean listening and believing what a collector with this profile tells when pressed about provenance? Or are there reliable and authentic documents showing that the husband of Agatha Christie (I suppose M. E. L. Mallowan is that Mallowan) and the grandfather of Mr Ilves were friends and visited dealers in London back in the days, and those freshly published 20 have that origin? When I’ll see those documents, I will publicly change my mind on the possible legal source of the just published papyri. Until then I will continue thinking that those 20 papyri more probably have the same origin of those that Coptologist Ivan Miroshnikov published years ago: they came from shady Turkish sellers without documentation of any sorts. I am waiting to be proven wrong.

The doing and undoing of papyrus collections: The sale of P.Oxy. XIV 1767

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Auction season is in full swing and while waiting for the Crosby-Schøyen Codex to go on sale for a projected stellar price, a more affordable offer of a deaccessioned Egypt Exploration Fund distribution papyrus is available at Forum Auctions.

The papyrus, P.Oxy. XIV 1767 in technical terminology, was given to Ampleforth Abbey Library in York, but the institution at some point sold it through the market – I don’t know exactly when and how but surely it was offered by London Sotheby’s on December 7, 2010. Those were the glorious days when the Green family appeared on the collecting scene throwing money anywhere the words “Bible” and “Christian” were mentioned. Sotheby’s curators tried the Christian connection in this case too, as you can gather from the catalogue entry, but despite the effort the papyrus sold for just £6000. To give you comparative prices, consider that four years later five papyri, distributed back in the days by the Egypt Exploration Fund to the Pacific School of Religion/Badè Museum, were privately sold through a bookseller at a much higher price, ca. $150,000, and none of them were of Christian content. (I covered part of this disgraceful story in 2016). In 2020 the same papyri were again on offer, even more discretely directly to booksellers, at an undisclosed price by someone named “Alan”. (If you’re curious, my book will be out this September with more details on this and other stories).

All these ex-Egypt Exploration Fund distribution papyri are licit, meaning that they were exported with licenses from Egypt when it was legal and their title of ownership passed through different institutions and people legally. But what about the ethical aspects of these dealings? A lot has been said and written about this: deaccessions of the society’s papyri and other antiquities defeat the gift mandate to be good custodians, and academics should not be involved at all in this kind of business, as explained in various professional association policies and hopefully in university ethical statements too.

And what about the traders? Dealers and auction houses, individually and as members of professional associations, could do certainly better. For instance, they could finally start producing catalogues with full and documented provenance of what they sell. They can also encourage conversations between sellers, collectors and institutions, so that objects might find a loving and caring home, as library and museum associations recommend too.

But looking at what is still happening after a decade of campaigning, I do wonder if there is any interest to improve practices. Not to mention legislations.

For more on these issues I suggest the following open access readings, with further bibliography:

Alice Stevenson, Scattered Finds: Archaeology, Egyptology and Museums, London: UCL 2019.

Roberta Mazza, Papyri, Ethics, and Economics: A Biography of P.Oxy. 15.1780 (𝔓39), Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 52 (2015), 113-142.

Brent Nongbri, “The Ethics of Publication: Papyrology,” Bryn Mawr Classical Review 25 May 2022, https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2022/2022.05.25/

Usama Gad, “Decolonizing the Troubled Archive of Papyri and Papyrology in a Global Digital Age: A View from Contemporary Egypt,” in Garrick V. Allen, Usama Gad, Kelsie Rodenbiker, Anthony Royle, and Jill Unkel (eds.), The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri at Ninety: Literature, Papyrology, Ethics, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2022.

The eBay experience

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It is a while that I am chasing my Turkish friend Mixantik-Ebuyerrrr, who is selling his papyrus fragments and other merchandise via eBay since 2008. Although he likes to call himself Robert, we actually know that this is not his real name; soon or later we will delve into his interesting story. But never mind, today I’d like to talk about the e-commerce platform through which Robert and others can freely and easily offer their manuscripts and other antiquities for sale in a very convenient way. Convenient for buyers, sellers and above all for those who own the platform in question: eBay is listed 310 in the 2017 Fortune list of the 500 world leading companies. It is hard to quantify the overall amount of antiquities (licit and illicit, genuine and fake) which are exchanged through the platform, but to give you an idea of the size and profit margins, today there are 1,531 Egyptian antiquities and 3,974 antique (sic) manuscripts on sale through the UK platform, only to mention objects at the centre of my interest.

So let us consider the case of a responsible collector looking for papyri on eBay. Among the fragments recently on sale there have been two offered by luck_button, a user active since 26 September 2003 and based, as my friend Robert, in Turkey. As you can see from the screenshot above and checking the link (papyrus 1, papyrus 2), the seller specifies with a bizarre sense of pride that there is no provenance or document on any of the two. I do not want to give my expertise on the scraps, so I am afraid but I won’t tell you anything about their date, writing, if they are genuine, etc. I am just concentrating on matters of legality and ethics, which should come first.

Turkey has ratified the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property of 1970 in 1981 and as a consequence has put very strict legislation in place for the protection of its cultural heritage. The main law for the protection of antiquities was issued in 1983; antiquities are ownership of the State, their commerce is illegal and penalties are harsh. It is fresh news that a British tourist trying to bring back ancient coins, which he found while snorkelling, is now detained in Turkey. In our case, however, the papyrus fragments are not from Turkey, but are originally from Egypt; their legal status could seem ambiguous. Nevertheless, since Mr luck_button is openly stating that they are unprovenanced and there are no documents on the acquisition history of the fragments, what is happening has high probability to be illegal and the fragments look like illicit fragments in transit through Turkey. Moreover, the seller candidly explains that he sends the merchandise through the standard Turkish post, as he has clearly done so far on the basis of his trade-history: what about customs duties? In a world where nations seem to have the less and less resources to control borders, it has become quite simple to send things around without any systematic check on the contents of packages. Never mind issues of conservation etc.

So in the light of this far from reassuring picture, a responsible collector would certainly avoid buying the fragments and would try, instead, to contact eBay in order to alert them on the situation. Here problems start. Any item on sale could be reported through a form that you should fill according to some pre-existent, standard criteria. In fact, none of them really fit to antiquities. Anyway, I made an experiment filling the form as best as I could few days ago. Nothing has happened and in the meanwhile the fragments have been sold to two anonymous irresponsible collectors: one for 512 and the other for 141 dollars.

e-Bay policies on the sale of antiquities varies from one country to another, in view of the different legislation regulating the market and approaches towards cultural heritage protection. For instance, eBay Germany policy openly forbids the selling of antiquities without accompanying documents regarding their acquisition history . The policy of eBay US seems less restrictive, or at least not so explicit, and gives some specific guidelines only regarding Native American cultural heritage. As for the UK, to my knowledge the only attempt made to regulate the nature of the antiquities sold on eBay concerns exclusively UK archaeological finds. This seems a narrow minded, nation-focussed approach for a country with a rich legal (and illegal) patrimony of antiquities originating from other countries on its territory, as a result of its imperial past, and a thriving antiquities market more in general.

As an academic who feels responsible of the objects I study, I had been able in the past to get in contact directly with the eBay policy office and they usually act quickly when some bids are flagged as potentially illegal. But it is clear that more proactive and structural measures should be put in place to tackle the problem.

The reality is that everything seems allowed because too many collectors/dealers, as the two who purchased the papyri at the centre of this post, do not respect the laws and ethics underpinning such exchanges (before you even start with a pointless counter-argument, I am afraid to say that no, darling, eventual ignorance of the laws does not excuse them). Moreover, eBay policies enforcement seems inefficient at best, and police active control is also low, even more so in the UK where the Art and Antiques Unit seems to be under threat of closure. Despite all the rhetoric on heritage preservation, and the amount of public money put in various programs, the truth is that this kind of everyday unregulated and unethical (when not illegal) market is slowly killing our cultural heritage in the open and apparently with the consent of everyone implied in the transactions.

Bibliography note:

I learnt a lot from reading J. Anglim Kreder, J. Nintrup, “Antiquity meets the modern age: eBay’s potential criminal liability for counterfeit and stolen international antiquity sale” Journal of Law, Technology & the Internet 5 (2014) 143–178 and N. Brodie, “The Internet Market in Antiquities” in F. Desmarais ed. Countering Illicit Traffic in Cultural Goods: The Global Challenge of Protecting the World’s Heritage Paris: ICOM 2015.

 

Faith after the Pharaohs: Christianity and the Rylands Gospel of Mary

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Our Gospel of Mary (P.Ryl. 3 463) is currently on loan to the British Museum exhibit Egypt: Faith after the Pharaohs. In the video below you can listen at me talking about the importance of papyrus findings for the understanding of early Christianity (or better: early Christianities), and above all you can see the fragment itself as recently restored by the excellent John Rylands Library conservation department.

I have written about this fragment offering my own translation in a previous post.

Making the Mummies Talk (without Palmolive soap!)

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Checking potential samples for the project with Alice Stevenson (Petrie Museum-UCL) and Kathryn Piquette (UCL)

Checking potential samples for the project with Alice Stevenson (Petrie Museum-UCL) and Kathryn Piquette (UCL) at the Petrie Museum, London.

As the readers of my blog know, I have been following the amazing adventures of Scott Carroll, former director of the Green collection and now partner of Ancient Asset Investments, and his friends dissolving Ptolemaic and early Roman mummy masks in Palmolive soap with the strange idea to retrieve New Testament manuscripts, but in fact finding some administrative Ptolemaic documents and Greek literary fragments as a result of their washing up. We will possibly have more precise information about what was inside the artefacts when the first volume of the Green papyri will be published, with the hope to receive also explanations on the methods employed for the dismounting, and on the provenance of the masks and cartonnage, especially after we learnt that Iraq clay tablets from the Green collection have been seized and are under investigation by the federal authorities.

As it often happens in research, some good came as a result of what happened. Public concern raised by the Palmolive Indiana Jones YouTube exploits has pulled together a multidisciplinary team of specialists lead by Melissa Terras (UCL) and Mike Toth (R.B. Toth Associates), including myself among others, that has received funds from Arcadia Foundation to investigate how special imaging techniques, such as multispectral technology, can lead to the establishment of non invasive methods for reading papyri encapsulated in mummy masks and other cartonnage objects. We named the project Making the Mummies Talk.

Sorting out cartonnage samples at the Petrie Museum

Sorting out cartonnage samples at the Petrie Museum

The work of the team has just begun. There are a number of challenges we are facing, ranging from conservation issues to the little information available so far on the compositions of ancient inks and how they respond to the different imaging techniques we are going to apply. But we are convinced that the project will be a decisive step forward into finding ways not only to avoid the destruction of ancient artefacts in the future, but also to gather data on their material features and freely share them for study. Classicists and other specialists have tended too often to focus only on the texts written on ancient papyri and other materials, overlooking other key aspects of ancient manuscripts, such as the quality of the papyrus employed, ink compositions and other means involved in their production, and their multiple lives as books or documents first, and later as recycled materials for the fabrication of something different.

This project will also allow us to evaluate what impacts past conservation techniques used in museums and libraries, or by dealers, had on the objects under study. While working with Mike Toth at the John Rylands Library, for example, we obtained some interesting information on the tax receipt on the back of the so-called Last Supper Rylands amulet: besides the text of the receipt otherwise unreadable, multispectral imaging brought to light traces of cell-tape unfortunately employed in the past on the papyrus surface, the effects of which were, however, invisible to the naked eye.

P.Ryl.Greek Add. 1166 back: the lighter stripes visible especially on the left half of the papyrus match with cell tape that was found in an envelope with the papyrus.

P.Ryl.Greek Add. 1166 back: the lighter stripes visible especially on the left half of the papyrus match with cell tape that was found in an envelope with the papyrus. Images were taken before conservation.

 

Speaking of Prices: The Wyman Fragment

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The Wyman fragment. Screenshot from the 2012 Sotheby's catalogue

The Wyman fragment. Screenshot from the 2012 Sotheby’s catalogue

On the 3rd of July 1950, Leland C. Wyman, a professor at Boston University, bought a small fragment of parchment with Greek writing on it in Cairo. According to the dealer, the fragment had been found by some local people in al-Fusṭāṭ, a story which might or might not be true as correctly noted by the first editor, W.H.P. Hatch.

The parchment, which has received different palaeographical dating ranging from the second half of the second century to the second half of the fourth century AD, bears some lines from Paul’s Romans chapters 4 and 5 attesting interesting variants. It is registered as 0220/20220 in the official list of New Testament manuscripts.

The Wyman fragment was sold through Sotheby’s, London twice: in 1988 by Wyman’s heirs and in 2012 by the 1988 purchaser, the Norwegian businessman and collector Martin Schøyen. At the first auction (21 June 1988, lot 47) the fragment had an estimate of £ 15.000-20.000, but reached the final price of £ 95.000. A similarly high increase was obtained at the 2012 auction, when from the estimate £ 150,000-200,000 the price went up to £ 301,250. The sum in this last case was paid by the Green family, who have later donated the manuscript to their Museum of the Bible.

So what does determine prices of ancient manuscripts these days? I am not entirely sure since as I said already in this blog and elsewhere the market (legal and illegal) is secretive by its own nature and we can collect only partial data on prices through publicly available auctions’ catalogues, or information that collectors and dealers are eventually happy to provide. Certainly those collectors who are opening public museums will be sharing price information; therefore I should add that in order to obtain a clearer picture of the economy surrounding world cultural heritage objects, it would be very helpful to add also appraisals to contrast and compare. We tend to forget that manuscripts and other antiquities are investment goods at the centre of interesting economic besides cultural enterprises that are worth studying.

In any case we may infer that prices are determined by a combination of factors, not necessarily in this order:

  1. The importance of a piece. In the case of the Wyman fragment its Christian content, the early – although debated as above mentioned, see e.g. W. Clarysse and P. Orsini recent re-dating to 350-400 AD – date and its rarity.
  2. Documented provenance. In this case pre-1972 purchase seems to be enough to make everybody happy. But legality on these questions is more a point of view than a firm subject since there was already Egyptian legislation on the antiquities market which was not always respected.
  3. The presence on the market of wealthy collectors as Martin Schøyen and the Green family/Museum of the Bible, who invest large sums of money on acquisitions for various reasons.
  4. Finally, marketing i.e. the way dealers and auction houses pack the merchandise they sell. In this specific case it was an easy job, in view of the contents and features of the fragment and the academic literature produced on it.

Thinking about Buying a Papyrus Online? Think Twice!

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Best real shopping? Bologna's city centre, no doubt...

Best real shopping? Bologna’s city centre, no doubt! Leave the computer at home and join me this summer…

I have been doing some experiments with online shopping for antiquities recently. I must admit I do not like buying online. I love real, solid, heavy shopping in a selected number of places, where I like to go in person for the ritual and the chatting with retailers and customers. I dislike Amazon and co. cardboard; I prefer nice, handmade packaging. Yes, I am one of those women you see happily carrying shopping bags on the street: old fashioned, I know.

Anyway, I had to try the online thrill in order to understand how it works for a paper I am giving at the annual ARCA conference in Amelia soon. I thought I would give you some ideas about what I found, and a taste of the paper, in case you are not lucky enough to be in Amelia in June, which is a pity for you, I must say, because that is one of the loveliest towns in Umbria.

About one month ago Alin Suciu (Göttingen) sent Jenny Cromwell (Copenhagen) and me a link to the online catalogue for the sale of a Coptic papyrus by Auctionata, one of the many auction houses now operating on the web. Basically Auctionata works like traditional auction houses, but bidding takes place exclusively online. The firm seems big, and covers many types of objects, from antiquities to watches, paintings and other collectibles. They have two main offices, one in Berlin the other in New York, but also agents in other countries.

So on the one hand I asked Jenny Cromwell to give me a quick opinion on the fragment versus the online catalogue description due to her expertise on the monastic material, and on the other I started a conversation via email with the auction house.

I reproduce here the image and the catalogue description both still available through the sale result webpage (the piece was sold for € 1,200 on 20 April):

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“The present piece is a letter, written on papyrus, originating from Western Thebes, ancient Egypt, dating to the 6th century AD. The papyrus letter is written in Coptic, the latest native form of the language of Egypt. Four lines can be read in contiguous writing in Sahidic, a dialect of the Coptic. On the edges further text lines remain. Therefore, it can be assumed that there used to be at least one more line above and below the present text. The text mentions Phoibamon (sic), a monk and founder of a monastery, who used to live in the monastery above the ruins of the Hatshepsut Temple in Deir el-Bahari (Western Thebes).

The letter is in a very well-preserved condition, considering its age. The main parts of the letter are missing, however, the parts that do remain are very well preserved. The papyrus displays frayed parts and it is partially folded. The corners are strongly frayed. Little fragments within the centre piece of the papyrus are missing. The original edge is only preserved on the left rim, however, strongly frayed. The letter is laid down on a beige textile matte in a dark green wooden frame with gold painted inner frame. The dimensions of the letter are 11.6 x 3 cm (width x height). The total dimensions, including the frame, are 15.3 x 20.8 cm.”

 These are Jenny’s quick notes and comments:

“Beginning of four lines of text, with trace of another line at the top. End of last line preserves epistolary formulae (‘do the [love’ > ‘please’), suggesting this is a letter, which is preceded by at least four lines of text (only a trace of the first survives), including, e.g. the date to the beginning of the month Paremhotep, mention ‘of God on behalf of (?) Mena .[…]’.

The name Phoibammon survives at the beginning of line 4. However, there is nothing to support this as the monastery of Apa Phoibammon at Deir el-Bahri – there is too much lost text between this name and Mena at the end of the previous line. These could be two men.

Also, the description is erroneous in stating that Phoibammon was a monk and founder of a monastery: the monastery of Apa Phoibammon was founded by Apa Abraham, bishop of Hermonthis, at the end of the 6th century / beginning of the 7th. As such, a 6th century date is unlikely, if connected with Thebes. There is nothing here to support a Theban provenance (unless it was actually found there) — the tenuous mention of Phoibammon is insufficient.”

To sum up: the auction house’s expertise is based on a correct grasp on the contents of the fragment, but overstates the interpretation of the name Phoibammon, adding also incorrect information on the founding of the Monastery of Deir el-Bahri. Phoibammon and Menas are in fact two of the commonest male personal name in late antique Egypt. The dating is shaky at best: if it was based on a supposed provenance from the monastery in question, it is misleading because the monastery has a later foundation, as we have seen. As for palaeographical dating, this is a notoriously problematic field, especially for Coptic texts, and not a word is spent in the catalogue to clarify the basis for a supposed 6th century date. As Jenny has pointed out in a following conversation, the handwriting is elementary because the letter was written by an unskilled writer, and this makes it even more difficult to date.

Auctionata’s condition description is carefully crafted; it starts with a bold “The letter is in a very well-preserved condition, considering its age” but as curators and papyrologists know this is just a tiny scrappy fragment (11 x 3 cm); we have thousands and thousands of them stored in collections all over the world. Certainly this is an important piece of our past that must be preserved with care, but there is nothing special about it at all.

The way the auction house attempts to connect it with a famous Christian religious figure highlights how important the Christian manuscript market has become; not a new phenomenon, but certainly one that is increasing as the major enterprise of the Green family’s Museum of the Bible, and the new book and other enterprises of the Christian preacher Josh McDowell in the field of manuscript collecting (and mummy cartonnage dissolving…) demonstrate.

Let’s move on to report on my email conversation about provenance with Auctionata’s helpful and very kind personnel. The first answer to a direct question on the point was simply as follows:

“Lot 146 was part of the collection Bruno Wertz, a high class German private collection. All items of this collection have superb museum quality.”

I thanked them, and explained that what I was asking for was more precise information on documents proving that the papyrus left Egypt legally, or at least before 1972 (that a piece left Egypt before that date does not necessarily mean that it was legally exported, a point people tend easily to forget…). This was the prompt answer:

“We had the possibility to talk with our consignor regarding the documents and the provenance. Unfortunately I have to inform you that we do not have any documents. The Coptic Letter comes from the private collection of Bruno Wertz, who confirmed that the object was bought in the 1960s. Please be aware that we provide every single buyer with our Auctionata Guarantee for all items purchased through Auctionata. The Auctionata Guarantee will apply for a period of 25 years from time to (sic) handover of the purchased item.”

So I checked the guarantee available online; it covers the abovementioned period but provenance is not mentioned anywhere in the terms, or at least I was unable to find it. From the email it seemed that Mr Wertz had confirmed somewhere that he acquired the piece in the 1960s; therefore I asked for an affidavit from him or the present owner stating when and where the pieces were purchased. In fact it could be absolutely plausible that Mr Wertz legally bought a papyrus and other Egyptian antiquities (other pieces were in fact auctioned online recently) in the 1960s without taking care about provenance documents. I have talked with collectors and dealers in these months; as many academics, dealers and collectors too have started paying attention to provenance documents only recently, in most cases in absolute good faith, as a result of the increasing public awareness of the issues at stake, especially after the Unesco convention enforcement in 1972. Auctionata’s answer, however, was brief and depressing:

“We’ve contacted the consignor again, but unfortunately we won’t receive any documents about the provenance.”

The fact that no affidavit would be provided, and the only guarantee is that of Auctionata, which totally ignores the provenance aspect, does not look positive for a potential purchaser.

To conclude: Are you the one who bought the papyrus? Well I am sorry for you, but this was certainly not a good choice and investment.

You have a tiny and scrappy papyrus, written in a very bad handwriting, without a date, without the monk you thought to have and what is worse without documented provenance! If someone will claim the papyrus back one day or Egypt will ask for repatriation, the Auctionata guarantee will probably count for nothing, because provenance seems not to be mentioned among its clauses.

Honestly, far better to have invested those 1,200 euros in a holiday, a decent coat or bag, or – why not? – in a donation to a museum or a library, or else in finding a better papyrus in terms of conservation, contents and provenance, if you really wanted to hang one on the wall – which by the way you cannot do unless the glass is ultraviolet filtered and the room under constant humidity and temperature control. So why not go for a contemporary painting for your empty wall instead? I have a couple of names: nice stuff and a good investment too. Next time you have the impulse, just join me on my Saturday shopping trip and I’ll take control of the money; you won’t be disappointed…

Have you ever seen this papyrus before?

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Screen Shot 2015-03-13 at 22.22.34I am trying to retrieve information on this fragment: have you ever seen it? If so, let me know.

Destroying mummy masks: “Since we own, it’s ok”. Maybe not…

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A reader of this blog, Beau Quilter, was so nice to edit the long and remarkably boring performance of Josh McDowell on papyri from mummy cartonnage and the truth of the Bible. We now have a two minutes peak that I hope all of you will watch:

I like the words Beau Quilter has added at the end as a comment to a quote of McDowell himself: “Apparently since they own it, it’s ok’.

This sentence underlines two important elements of this sad story. First, the incredible lack of any awareness about the importance of archaeological evidence that this man and others, like Scott Carroll (who apparently dismounted mummy cartonnage for the Green collection and possibly others in the past), demonstrate. The aggressive cultural discourse behind their words and actions would deserve a treatise on its own. People like Josh McDowell and Scott Carroll are a threat not only for the damages they have procured to cultural heritage patrimony, but also for their misuse of ancient manuscripts in public discourses on the Bible. Their faith must be very weak if they need scraps of papyrus in order to prove the value of the Scriptures.

The second element I wish to bring to your attention is that for once there is some truth in what McDowell is saying: from what I have gathered, according to the American and other legislations, the legal owner of an ancient object can dispose of it as he/she wishes. This opens a number of interesting considerations on responsible and irresponsible private collecting that would deserve a longer, separate post. But that ownership must be legal: if it comes out that the object was bought illegally, in this case that the mask does not have clear provenance, everything changes. In principle, the legal owner of these destroyed masks could pursue McDowell and other iconoclasts, and the dealers who sold the objects, in order to be compensate for the loss.

Why Josh McDowell and other owners of antiquities are not revealing names of the dealers they have purchased masks and other cartonnage from, and do not publicly provide documents proving that their acquisitions are legal? Do they fear that the eventual legal owner of those artefacts (e.g. the Egyptian Government) will pursue them in court one day?