[MSN] Brent Benjamin and the Saqqara mask in the Saint Louis Art Museum: Demands for Antiquities, Demands for Proof

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Subject: RE: Brent Benjamin and the Saqqara mask in the Saint Louis Art
Museum: Demands for Antiquities, Demands for Proof

Saint Louis Art Museum's director Brent Benjamin hides behind an Art Loss
Register check. If an item is not in the ALR database, or any other database
of stolen property, that does not necessarily mean the item is not stolen.
The Saint louis Art Museum bought this mask from the convicted, and most
infamous Aboutaam 'dealers'. Reason enough to be very cautious (or rather:
reason enough to not buy anything from these guys!).
The Aboutaams provided the SLAM with 'provenance' information. In this limbo
between Hawass and Benjamin both asking each other for proof about theft
and/or provenance the odds are against the SLAM. Egypt would never allow a
mask of this importance to leave the country. Benjamin stated that in those
days (the early fifties when the mask was found) it was a custom to give
objects to archaeologists digging in Egypt. This far not one single
archaeologist has stepped forward to support this weird claim. Besides,
Mohammed Zacharia Goneim, the archaeologist who found the mask, was an
archaeologist in the service of the Egyptian authorities, and being a civil
servant he would never get a 'present' like that.
The mask may have left Egypt through corrupt officials. That still does make
its disappearance a theft.
Brent Benjamin is taking the same stand as De Montebello initially did when
the Italians claimed 42 objects. "I will not return those objects unless the
Italians come up with convincing proof".
Sometimes this kind of proof - the exact date when, and where an item was
stolen - just is not available. 

Thefts from depositories in museums worldwide are not unique. It goes with
thefts from depositories that it may take a long time, even years, before it
is discovered. How would Benjamin react if an item stolen unnoticed from a
SLAM depository would turn up after many years in a far away museum? Would
he demand proof about the theft: exact date etc or would he try and get it
back just based on documents showing the object originally belonged to his
museum?

Benjamin has joined the ranks of too many American museum directors refusing
to return what rightfully, and even more importantly,: ethically, belongs to
source countries. I am convinced that deep inside Brent Benjamin knows that
the origins of this mask are most dubious, and that there is plenty of
reason to return it to Egypt. Let's not forget that this mask is part of
burial ceremonies and traditions. In that sense Benjamin is participating in
a chain of grave robbers. Within the USA this would never be possible with
burial remains of American Indians. Those are returned to tribes even
centuries after they have been stolen. Nobody would even dare to ask those
tribes for the kind of proof Benjamin is asking now.

This double standard is quite sickening, and shows an obnoxious arrogance
towards source countries.

The SLAM, quite understandably, is not an ICOM member. The refusal to return
this mask puts this museum even further outside the international museum
community.


Ton Cremers
 

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: MSN CPPROT [mailto:museum-security at museum-security.org]
> Sent: 13 May 2006 08:18
> To: 'msn-list at te.verweg.com'
> Subject: Brent Benjamin and the Saqqara mask in the Saint Louis Art 
> Museum: Demands for Antiquities, Demands for Proof
> 
> Demands for Antiquities, Demands for Proof
> 
> By SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY
> Published: May 13, 2006
> 
> Facing claims from an Egyptian antiquities official, the St. 
> Louis Art Museum said yesterday that it would keep a 3,200-year-old 
> mummy mask unless Egypt could produce firm evidence that it was 
> stolen, The Associated Press reported.
> Zahi Hawass, secretary general for the Supreme Council of Antiquities 
> in Egypt, asserted this month that the mask had probably been stolen 
> from an Egyptian site before it was acquired by the art museum in 
> 1998. He set a deadline of Monday for the object's return, telling The 
> St. Louis Post-Dispatch that if it were not handed back, "I will make 
> their life hell." Brent Benjamin, the museum's director, said that the 
> mask had been acquired for about $500,000 and that the museum had 
> checked with the international Art Loss Register, Interpol and the 
> director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo to verify that the mask had 
> not been reported missing, lost or stolen. The burial mask, made of 
> wood and plaster, with glass eyes for the woman whose head it covered, 
> was excavated from a pyramid in 1952 in Saqqara, Egypt. Mr.
> Hawass said that because of poor record-keeping practices, it was 
> documented only once, in 1959. He said he had given the St. Louis 
> museum a copy of a register indicating that the mask, of Ka Nefer 
> Nefer, above, had been sent to the Egyptian Museum that year. Mr. 
> Benjamin said Mr. Hawass had "not provided conclusive evidence to 
> support his claim." But he added, "The museum remains willing to 
> evaluate its proper ownership of the mask in light of valid 
> documentation."
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/
>