[MSN] Egyptian complains of antiquity inequity. St. Louis museum refuses to return mask claimed to be stolen.

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Egyptian complains of antiquity inequity 
St. Louis museum refuses to return mask claimed to be stolen.


St. Louis Post-Dispatch 
Published Saturday, May 13, 2006 
ST. LOUIS - The Saint Louis Art Museum has refused to meet a Monday deadline
for returning a mummy mask to Egypt.

Yesterday at a news conference, Museum Director Brent Benjamin called upon
Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, to
"provide documentation substantiating his claim that the mask was stolen -
or to cease his attacks on the Saint Louis Art Museum."

In a letter dated Feb. 14, Hawass charged that the 3,200-year-old mask was
illegally taken in the early 1990s from a storage facility near the site of
its excavation, and he demanded that the process of returning it start
within two weeks. Hawass later changed his deadline for the mask's return to
Monday. The museum maintains it has not received any communication from him
setting a date. He did not reply to a Post-Dispatch request for comment.

Benjamin has said the museum exercised due diligence in 1998 at the time of
the acquisition to determine whether the mask had been legally exported from
Egypt. He said yesterday the museum independently verified the mask's known
provenance, or history of ownership; that it contacted the Art Loss Register
and Interpol to see whether the mask had been reported missing, lost or
stolen; and it consulted with Mohammed Saleh, then director of the Egyptian
Museum in Cairo, to ensure that the pending purchase was appropriate.

"In all of this research, no authority ever identified this important work
of art as missing, lost or stolen," he said.

Hawass has not specified what action he would take if the Monday deadline is
not met, but at a May 1 press meeting in Cairo, he told the Post-Dispatch he
would disparage the museum in the art world. 

"I will make their life hell," he said.

In the May ARTnews, the largest circulation U.S. art magazine, he is quoted
as saying, "How can this museum bring children to visit and tell them that
this" mask "is taken out illegally from an excavation?"

Benjamin said yesterday the museum considers Hawass' allegations to be very
serious, "but it seems that drama has gotten in the way of the facts."

He reiterated that "the Saint Louis Art Museum would reconsider its rightful
ownership of the mask if valid documentation surfaces refuting our proper
ownership."

Hawass has a reputation as colorful and entertaining. ARTnews said admirers
find him charming and enthusiastic; detractors see him as autocratic,
egotistical, vindictive and publicity-hungry. ARTnews noted that Hawass
proclaimed, "I am Pharaoh!" upon entering a gallery at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York, where the exhibition "Hatshepsut" was on view. 

http://www.columbiatribune.com/2006/May/20060513News025.asp