21 - 27 February 2002
Issue No.574
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 21 - 27 February 2002 Issue No.574 |
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The longer arm of the law
Antiquities officials are jubilant over a US court victory upholding the struggle against the looting of Egyptian heritage. Jenny Jobbins looks into the case
Last week's historic verdict in which a New York federal district court jury found the former president of the National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art guilty of conspiring to sell antiquities stolen from Egypt is bound to send waves through the international antiquities market.
Frederick Schultz, owner of the Manhattan firm of Frederick Schultz Ancient Art at 41 East 57th Street and antiques consultant to former President Bill Clinton, was charged with dealing in objects taken out of Egypt in violation of the 1983 Egyptian Antiquities Law. Under the law, all newly-excavated objects and those still in the ground are deemed to be the property of the Egyptian state. It was the first time a foreign law had been invoked in a United States court.
"I am very happy indeed," Supreme Council for Antiquities Secretary-General Gaballa Ali Gaballa told Al-Ahram Weekly. However the objects are not yet back in Egypt, and negotiations for their recovery could take some time, Gaballa added.
"An Egyptian law has been admitted in American courts. With the position of the United States vis-à-vis the world this will shake all those who are dealing with our antiquities to the core," Gaballa said when the verdict was announced. He said it was a warning to all US antique dealers to be cautious that the objects they handled were not stolen from Egypt.
The jury took four hours to reach their verdict in the Manhattan courtroom. The trial was closely followed by archaeologists, antiquities dealers, museum curators and private collectors as a test of US determination to apply the US National Stolen Property Act in cases where a theft has taken place abroad. The indictment was seen as a sign that the government intended to enforce not only US laws but those which protect the cultural heritage of other nations.
Schultz violated the act's provision under which it is a federal offence to transport or receive foreign items known to have been stolen.
One piece Schultz handled was the head of a statue of the 18th-dynasty Pharaoh Amenhotep III, father of Pharaoh Akhenaten, which according to Gaballa he used as collateral for a $1.2 million loan from Citibank. "We hope to recover it and four other stolen pieces," Gaballa told the Weekly.
These are a Graeco-Roman bronze statue of the falcon-headed god Horus; a limestone stela, 22cm high and 25cm wide and depicting an agricultural scene, which may have been stolen from a 5th- dynasty nobleman's tomb in Saqqara; a 6th-dynasty limestone tomb relief of the owner and his wife weaving lotus flowers; and a 19th-dynasty statue of a man holding an offering.
Gaballa added that their return would have to be negotiated through the proper diplomatic channels.
Art dealers and museum curators have questioned the US action in upholding a foreign law giving ownership of ancient objects to the nation of origin. Some argue that they are better cared for in private collections abroad.
Last November, lawyers acting for Schultz filed a pre-trial defence motion in an attempt to declare the 1983 Egyptian law invalid in the US and to undermine its efficacy. The motion was denied in a ruling by Judge Jed S Rakoff and the trial went ahead on 28 January.
Schultz was indicted last July after being implicated in a case involving British antiquities restorer Jonathan Tokeley-Parry, who in the early 1990s began stealing antiquities directly from sites in Egypt and taking them out of the country.
Tokeley-Parry contrived to steal 35 items from the tomb of Heteb-Ka in Saqqara, and smuggled the masterpieces through customs by hiding them under a layer of plaster which he painted in a crude fashion to suggest they were legitimate replicas. His activities were uncovered in 1994 when he attempted to sell 24 papyrus texts to a dealer who insisted on a provenance to prove their authenticity. Tokeley-Parry's assistant took the papyri to the British Museum, where the curator immediately recognised them as part of a collection discovered in 1966 by a British mission excavating in the animal necropolis of North Saqqara.
The museum called in Scotland Yard, who found enough evidence to convict Tokeley-Parry. He was released last year after completing a seven-year prison sentence.
The correspondence and bank records detectives uncovered eventually led them to Schultz, who all along strongly denied any wrongdoing. But Tokeley-Parry, who took the witness stand for three days, testified that Schultz took part in a conspiracy to create a false provenance for stolen antiquities to make them appear as if they had come from an English collection belonging to one Thomas Alcock, who had brought them out of Egypt in the 1920s. Tokeley-Parry said he and Schultz had made false labels, baking them in an oven to make them look old.
Dealers are denying that their practices are suspect, and claim this is an isolated case. However, several archaeological organisations claim that illegal trafficking fosters the looting and destruction of sites and signed an amicus brief before the trial to lend their support to the prosecution. The Archaeological Institute of America, the Society for American Archaeology, the Society for Historical Archaeology, the American Anthropological Association and the US National Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites said in their joint brief that they "support [that] the legal principles underlying [the US v. Schultz] case are essential to the preservation of the past and effectuate the best interests of the United States public."
The US appears to be upholding a 1970 UNESCO convention to protect cultural property against illegal trading. In 1983, the same year that the Egyptian law was passed, Congress passed legislation enabling the US to negotiate bilateral agreements with countries at high risk from looters. Agreements have recently been signed with several such countries.
Hand-in-hand with its policy to protect vulnerable nations in danger of being robbed of their past, the US is also vigorously investigating cases of art works which may have been stolen from Jewish families during World War II. Two Expressionist paintings on loan from Vienna to the New York Museum of Modern Art were recently seized under an order preventing their return.
Museum directors and dealers say cases such as this will make it increasingly difficult to mount exhibitions, and will lead to a drop in the thriving collectors' market. But archaeologists and art experts, not to mention robbed governments and individuals, feel a change is long overdue. They ask why title deeds are required for a house or a car, but not for a work of art which may be worth many times the value.
Lawyers for Schultz are reported to say they will appeal against the verdict on the grounds that whether or not an item is stolen cannot be determined by a foreign law, a variation of their pre-defence motion. Schultz is scheduled to be sentenced on 30 May. He faces a maximum five years in prison or a $250,000 fine. Meanwhile, Egypt still hopes to recover its property.
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