Illicit Antiquities linked to Islamic terrorists — Who’da thunk it?

Alun Politics, The Past 3 Comments , , , ,

It shouldn’t be news. I men­tioned the pos­sib­il­ity in 2005, and again late last year. When you buy unproven­anced antiquit­ies you don’t know who you’re buy­ing them from.

Now the Ash­land Daily Tid­ings reports on the work by Mat­thew Bog­danos, which he says shows that the con­nec­tion between the trade in illi­cit antiquit­ies and Islamic insur­gents is undeni­able. Yes, you read that right. It turns out some mem­bers of Al-Qaeda are prone to crim­inal activity.

Des­pite that fair-play to Ant­o­nia Kim­bell at the Art Loss Register who said that she’s seen no evid­ence of a dir­ect link. The way the Art Loss Register works is they check a data­base of illi­cit arte­facts. Obvi­ously that means that someone needs to have registered an arte­fact as illi­cit, but that’s not a prob­lem so long as Al-Qaeda remem­ber to fill out the paperwork.

I went to look at David Gill’s blog to fact check the work­ings of the Art Loss Register because Kimbell’s com­ments seemed unfeas­ib­ily mor­onic. I can’t believe someone that cred­u­lous would be able to hold down a job at the Art Loss Register if it worked the way I described it. But it does, and David Gill is also blog­ging this story.

There’s a lot of things I’d like to see hap­pen with the Iraqi occu­pa­tion. One is that I’d like to see UK and US gov­ern­ments sup­port our sol­diers by mak­ing it harder for ‘art col­lect­ors’ to fund the enemy. If you’d like to read more about how you can fund the killing of Brit­ish and Amer­ican sol­diers and pick up a nice antiquity into the bar­gain then you can read Loot­ing Mat­ters, Illi­cit Cul­tural Prop­erty and Safe Corner.

Sympathy for the Art Collectors

Alun Politics, The Past 2 Comments , , , ,

There’s an odd story on the Independent’s web­site today. It seems Uni­ver­sity Col­lege, Lon­don may have been hous­ing hun­dreds of arte­facts illeg­ally expor­ted from Iraq. It’s con­tro­ver­sial not because of UCL’s acquis­i­tion of the pots, but for their reac­tion after it was sug­ges­ted that these may be illi­cit materials.

The arte­facts are devil bowls dat­ing from the 6th to 8th cen­tur­ies AD. The idea is that you put an incant­a­tion on them and then tip them upside down to trap an evil spirit. These were loaned by the Nor­we­gian phil­an­throp­ist Mar­tin Schøyen who bought them in good faith from a Jord­anian dealer who swore blind that they’d been in his family’s pos­ses­sion for gen­er­a­tions. How­ever not every­one was con­vinced by the story so UCL set up a com­mit­tee to invest­ig­ate where these bowls came from. Schøyen, for reas­ons which aren’t entirely clear, sued for the return of the bowls. The com­mit­tee, it is said, con­cluded that they were prob­ably looted from Iraq. Until then this had been unknown to UCL and there’s no evid­ence that Mar­tin Schøyen had even the faintest ink­ling that they were looted either.

The Inde­pend­ent story makes it very clear that it was an open and shut case, Schøyen had title to the bowls for seven years, there’s no sug­ges­tion that he looted the bowls nor that he was aware that they were looted. The bowls are his. What is caus­ing the fuss is that the Invest­ig­at­ing Committee’s report has been with­held as part of an out of court set­tle­ment. It’s all puzz­ling as it would be help­ful to know how these pots were able to be fenced without arous­ing the sus­pi­cions of an upstand­ing cit­izen. It’s a strong argu­ment for tougher reg­u­la­tion for the antiquit­ies trade as it would be ter­rible if it could be proven again that someone else has taken advant­age of Schøyen’s trust.

If you’re won­der­ing what they look like, a quick search on on ebay reveals that you can buy them for around $600 from the Mal­ter Gal­ler­ies. You can see pho­tos on their site. Again there’s no evid­ence these are know­ingly looted from Iraq. In fact you can’t be cer­tain where they come from at all apart from the Near East. Is that enough to make them a safe purchase?

Freedom is…

Alun Politics, The Past No Comments , , , , , ,

Baghdad Wall
Not Ber­lin. Photo (cc) this­chan­ginglife.

The Occu­pa­tion is finally bring­ing the peoples of Iraq together in peace. I’ve tagged a blog post in del.icio.us Bagh­dad res­id­ents protest US-erected divid­ing wall on Annot­ated Life which notes that Sun­nis and Shi’ites are hand in hand in oppos­i­tion to the con­struc­tion of the latest wall across the city. I briefly noted that in another con­text it could pass for an Iron Cur­tain. With a bit more though I think I was wrong. What has sur­prised me is after think­ing about it some more there may be a grim­mer his­tor­ical com­par­ison.
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America really really REALLY isn’t the new Rome

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[Cross-posted to Revise & Dis­sent]

Las Vegas Trevi Fountain
Las Vegas Trevi Foun­tain. Photo by *nathan

I’m run­ning out of emphasis. On Sunday the Inde­pend­ent ran a story US ‘mir­rors Roman Empire’ in Iraq war. It’ll be dis­ap­pear­ing behind a pay wall soon. Poten­tially this could be a really inter­est­ing story. The Romans made repeated attempts to con­quer the east and failed. For instance is the Coali­tion of the Will­ing run­ning into sim­ilar dif­fi­culties in the ter­rain? But the par­al­lel isn’t with the inva­sion of Meso­pot­amia. More

You too can help fund Islamic terrorists with a few pretty antiquities

Alun Politics, The Past 1 Comment , , ,

History Carnival ButtonThis has been sat in the drafts pile for a while. I’ve been writ­ing and re-writing because I don’t want to have the post get lost in the rights or wrongs of the occu­pa­tion of Iraq. I simply wanted to high­light a ser­i­ous prob­lem. I’ve moved it up because Cronaca notes the Guard­ian story that illi­cit excav­a­tion of antiquit­ies may be help­ing fund ter­ror­ists in Iraq and sug­gests tak­ing the story with a moun­tain of salt. I’m not so dis­missive. The pic­ture below shows just one site.

Iraq, Cultural Heritage Sites
Umma, a Sumerian cap­tial city, trashed. The smooth bits are the unex­cav­ated patches. Photo from the WMF.

The entire coun­try of Iraq has been placed on the World Monu­ment Watch 100 most endangered sites list. This fol­lows con­tin­ued law­less­ness and whole­sale loot­ing of ancient sites in the country.

This isn’t any­thing new. SAFE records a ongo­ing fail­ure to act to pre­serve Iraqi her­it­age. The prob­lem con­tin­ues. There are now large areas of the coun­try where illi­cit excav­at­ors can oper­ate. Con­trol is now so weak that items can be stolen to order and shipped to Saudi Ara­bia and else­where. So far the loot appears to be stored but it should in time be pos­sible to fence the goods on the antiquit­ies market.

Now obvi­ously I’d like to make clear to Christie’s, Sotheby’s and espe­cially their law­yers that I’m not sug­gest­ing for one moment that they’d sell goods if an Islamic fun­da­ment­al­ist turned up on their door­step with a sack of loot. How­ever I’m not totally con­vinced that their checks are suf­fi­cient to stop them from unwit­tingly selling illi­cit mater­ial. I don’t make this charge lightly. Below is a dia­gram from Ian Stead’s book on the Salis­bury Hoard. The Salis­bury Hoard was illeg­ally excav­ated in the UK and fenced through the Lon­don mar­ket. See how many names you recognise.

Diagram of how illicit antiquities were fenced through the London Antiquities trade
Dia­gram of trade of illi­cit mater­ial. From Ian Steads’s Salis­bury Hoard

It’s hard to argue that some­thing isn’t very wrong in the antiquit­ies mar­ket, when illi­cit goods can be passed around like that. It’s amaz­ing the Brit­ish Museum was even able to spot some­thing was amiss. It’s also worth not­ing that all the antiquit­ies going over­seas should have had export licences. I don’t know how many did. It must drive hon­est antiquit­ies deal­ers mad with rage. I’m amazed you don’t hear the major auc­tion houses demand­ing a crack­down on the people who bring their trade into disrepute.

It’s safe to assume that there is the demand and the means of sup­ply­ing it once the mater­ial is out of Iraq.

Now all we have to do work out sort of per­son is able to work in the remote parts of Iraq where there’s a bunch armed vicious Islamic fun­da­ment­al­ists run­ning amok. If we could also work out some sort of con­nec­tion between the pre­sumed first link in the antiquit­ies chain, deal­ers in Saudi Ara­bia and Jordan, and the for­eign insur­gents in Iraq. Bad­ger­minor at Orbis Quin­tus has some idea where they might come from.

I don’t think you need a moun­tain of salt. The one ray of sun­shine is the people who go and do this are the ones who get ripped off. Buy buy­ing antiquit­ies you could well be help­ing fund ter­ror­ists, but by far the lar­ger amount of profit will be siphoned off into organ­ised crime. So that’s alright.

Links you might be inter­ested in:
SAFE: Sav­ing Antiquit­ies for Every­one
The Illi­cit Antiquit­ies Research Centre