TV review: NRK (Norway), Skriftsamleren [The Manuscript Collector]
Staffan Lund?n
Museion Department of Interdisciplinary Studies
Gothenburg University
Sweden
On 7 September and 14 September 2004, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) aired the documentary Skriftsamleren [The Manuscript Collector], a well-researched and hard-hitting investigation into the collecting activities of the Norwegian multi-millionaire Martin Sch?yen.1 The documentary, produced by Ola Flyum and David Hebditch, with Pakistan researcher Sohail Qureshi, offered to a wide audience a clear-cut example of how the looting and destruction of archaeological heritage is ultimately financed by wealthy collectors and legitimized by naive scholars.
The Buddhist manuscripts
In 2001 ? the year that the Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas ? Martin Sch?yen made the headlines. In newspaper articles and radio interviews he revealed that he had in his possession a large collection of ancient (first- to seventh-century) Buddhist manuscripts and manuscript fragments that had been saved from the Taliban regime. In a radio interview, quoted in the NRK programme, Sch?yen related the following story about the origin of the manuscripts: Buddhists in Afghanistan, seeking refuge from the regime and hiding in caves had discovered the manuscripts. The Buddhists sent out requests for help to save these ancient manuscripts and Sch?yen mounted ?a rescue operation to save a part of the world?s cultural heritage, which otherwise would have been destroyed?. According to Sch?yen, the manuscripts were smuggled out of Afghanistan by refugees fleeing over the mountains at altitudes of more than 4000 metres, closely followed by the Taliban. Sch?yen also related that he had in his possession all the fragments of a book that ? he claimed ? had been below the hand of a Buddha statue the regime had blown up. Having rescued these manuscripts, Sch?yen wanted them to remain in safety in Norway. He hoped the collection would be purchased by the Norwegian government for the National Library and placed in a new, specially-constructed building. When arguing for a Norwegian purchase he emphasized the prestige that would accrue to the country: ?For Norway the collection would mean as much for the country?s reputation abroad as Ibsen, Nansen and Vigeland. It would be as important for the country as these ambassadors?. Sch?yen?s asking price for the collection is not known, but in 2003 he turned down an offer of over $110 million (NOK 800 million). In short, according to Sch?yen?s own testimony, he had saved an important part of the global cultural heritage from certain destruction, and his implication was that for this altruistic ?rescue operation? he deserved public gratitude (and a monetary reward).2
Yet, the NRK investigators asked: what were the exact circumstances of Sch?yen?s rescue operation? Were the manuscripts really saved from the Taliban? Where and when were they actually found?
Figure 1. Looting at Gilgit. (Photo courtesy of NRK.)
To find out the answers to these questions, the NRK team went to Bamiyan, the alleged findspot of the manuscripts. At Bamiyan, they met with the archaeologist Kazuya Yamauchi, who was working at the site. Yamauchi explained that he had never found any manuscripts in the caves at Bamiyan, and that the caves had been thoroughly looted long before the Taliban came to power in 1998. But Yamauchi also told them that when he had visited the town of Zargaraan, east of Bamiyan, he had heard that in 1993 a landslide had uncovered a cave and a strong wind had blown manuscript fragments across the countryside. Yamauchi believed that Zargaraan could be the true find spot of the manuscripts in the Sch?yen collection.
Sch?yen refused to be interviewed for the documentary, but Jens Braarvig, professor in Religious Studies at Oslo University, and the person in charge of publishing the Sch?yen manuscripts, admitted on camera that there is no reason to believe that the manuscripts are not from Zargaraan. If this is the case, the investigators concluded, then it means that the story about the manuscripts being saved from the Taliban is false. In 1993 there were no Taliban in Afghanistan.
The investigators uncovered more disturbing facts about the collection?s origins. During the civil war in Afghanistan the National Museum in Kabul was looted and lost over 70 per cent of its collections, including its collection of Buddhist manuscripts. The NRK programme revealed that two, probably six, manuscript fragments in the Sch?yen collection came from the National Museum. This fact had been known to Sch?yen, Braarvig and other scholars publishing the manuscripts since 1998, but they had not made it publicly known, nor had they informed the Kabul museum about the whereabouts of the fragments. It was not until the NRK investigators started to make inquiries that Sch?yen wrote a letter to the Afghani authorities and offered to return the fragments to the Kabul museum.
Yet, there was more. The investigators discovered that many manuscript fragments in the Sch?yen collection were not actually from Afghanistan. This part of the investigation threw some light on how Sch?yen had ?rescued? some of these manuscripts. It appears that, after initial purchases from Sam Fogg and other London dealers, Sch?yen attempted to cut out these intermediaries and to buy closer to the ?source?. The programme alleges that Sch?yen started to deal directly with the smugglers.3 That Sch?yen must have had knowledge of the recent illicit origin of the material he was purchasing is strongly suggested by an incriminating fax to which the investigators gained access, in which Sch?yen writes to a dealer about one of his purchases:
All materials have [the] same origin, a cave high up in the border area between Afghanistan, China and Pakistan. My primary source said he was in the cave with the diggers...4
The place where the objects were said to have been dug up is not named, but the investigators concluded that it was probably the town of Gilgit in northern Pakistan, which is known for its archaeological remains. The fact that the Sch?yen collection contains material from Gilgit was confirmed by one of Sch?yen?s suppliers, Bill Veres. Veres did not want to be interviewed, but in conversation with one of the NRK investigators (recorded with a hidden microphone) he said that in 1998 he had sold Sch?yen a manuscript from Gilgit. The price paid was equivalent to NOK 160,000 (?13,000). When interviewed, Braarvig reluctantly admitted that there were ?a few leaves [from Pakistan] which had crept into the collection?. After the broadcast of the first part of the programme, Sch?yen confirmed that his collection contained between 200 and 300 manuscript fragments from Pakistan.
To find out more about the source of the manuscripts, the NRK team travelled to Gilgit. After a long journey, passing through Peshawar, the main trading centre for drugs, arms and antiquities from Afghanistan, they eventually reached Gilgit. Here they met with Muzaffar Ali, a representative of the local administration. He related that for ages the ruins of monasteries and other archaeological remains had remained untouched because they were considered to be haunted by evil spirits. The situation changed one night in April 1994. That night a group of looters arrived. The looters were Pathans, the dominant ethnic group of Peshawar. They started digging in the ruins and found books and other antiquities. After the looters had left, the poor people from the neighbourhood also tried their luck in the ruins. Among them was the shepherd Mohammed Iqbal, who told the NRK team that he had dug up a book with several hundred pages. He sold the book for 270,000 rupees (?2500), which to him was equal to 10 years income. He was later told that the book had been sold in Peshawar for a price equivalent to NOK 0.5 million (?40,000). Its later whereabouts are unknown, but according to Bill Veres it may well have been the book he sold to a Japanese collector for a price equivalent to NOK 2.4 million (?200,000). Sch?yen had been offered the book first but did not bid more than NOK 1 million (?80,000).
Figure 2. The ?Bamiyan? manuscripts. (Photo courtesy of NRK.)
At Gilgit, the NRK team could document ample evidence for the destructive consequences of looting. The site was littered with pottery fragments. The Pathan looters had found the manuscripts stored in jars, and in their hurry to retrieve them they had broken the jars into pieces. This violent treatment had also damaged the manuscripts. The investigators were told by Iqbal that when he arrived at the site he had found around 500 manuscript fragments spread over the area. Believing that these were ?bewitched Hindu texts? ? and apparently unaware that small manuscript fragments could also be sold ? Iqbal and his friends used them as fuel when making tea. At the site the NRK team was shown a shallow Buddha relief on a mountain slope around which the first group of Pathan looters had drilled holes for explosives. They had planned to detach the Buddha with dynamite, but aborted the attempt.
The investigators could only conclude that the true circumstances of the origins of the Buddhist manuscripts were less flattering for Sch?yen than the saga he had told. The manuscripts were not saved from the Taliban in a rescue operation. They had come into his possession through a totally unrelated route. They had been bought on the art market, sometimes directly from smugglers. Some of the material was not even from Afghanistan. These facts had been known to Sch?yen and a number of scholars for years, but they had kept the information to themselves.5
The magic bowls
Martin Sch?yen possesses one of the world?s largest collections of Mesopotamian so-called ?magic? (or ?incantation?) bowls ? ceramic bowls with magical texts in Aramaic, dating c. ad 400?700. The number of magic bowls in his collection is reported to be 600 to 700. The investigators decided to look into the origin, present location and legal status of this large collection. In their quest they were joined by the archaeologist Erica Hunter of Cambridge University, who has researched similar bowls in Bagdhad?s National Museum. She first heard about the Sch?yen bowls in the 1990s and since then has been trying to learn more about them.
Hunter related that she had learned that the bowls were at University College London (UCL) and that professors Mark Geller, at the Institute of Jewish Studies UCL, and Shaul Shaked, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, were responsible for the research and publication of the bowls. Geller and Shaked had, however, refused her permission to see the bowls. They also declined to be interviewed for the programme.
The UN sanctions against Iraq, first imposed in 1990, prohibit trade in antiquities which have left Iraq since that year. The ban on dealing in Iraqi antiquities was repeated in a resolution of the UN Security Council in 2003. Since then, in the UK, anyone dealing in, or possessing, Iraqi antiquities exported since 1990 may face a prison sentence of up to seven years. Individuals or institutions possessing such objects without informing an appropriate law enforcement agency also commit a criminal offence.6 In Norway, the UN resolution was implemented through a regulation of May 2003 and since then anyone found guilty of dealing in, or possessing, Iraqi antiquities is liable to a prison sentence of three years.
Already in 1999, Hunter and other scholars had asked UCL about the legal status of the bowls, but UCL had declined to investigate them. When the NRK investigators started to make enquiries, UCL appeared unhelpful. In an interview, a UCL spokesman confirmed that UCL had held some bowls for ?academic purposes? but that the bowls had been returned to their owner.
However, this turned out not to be true, and the investigators discovered that the bowls were still in storage at UCL. (They were promised a look at the bowls, but the offer was later withdrawn, because, it was claimed, the keys to the store could not be found). In a second interview, the UCL spokesman revealed that he had discovered the bowls were still at UCL. He added that UCL?s legal advisors had said it would be inappropriate to hand them back until the putative owner could provide written evidence of title.
So what was the provenance of the incantation bowls? Were they exported from Iraq before or after 1990? Not surprisingly, there were conflicting answers to these questions. Braarvig claimed he had seen documentation confirming that the bowls had been in private collections since the 1930s. A letter from Sch?yen?s lawyer to NRK stated that the ownership history of the objects went back to before 1965.
Yet, according to the sources consulted by the investigators, the bowls have a more recent origin. They allege that the bowls were illegally excavated in Iraq in 1992 or 1993,7 and that Sch?yen bought them in London for about NOK 25 million (?2 million). The vendors were Pars Antiques and the Jordanian dealer Ghassan Rihani (now deceased). Rihani had close ties with the Jordanian royal family and had provided an export license to cover his shipments from Amman to London, though the investigators called the authenticity of this licence into question.
It may be noted also that the scholars publishing the bowls in the Sch?yen collection acknowledge that many bowls are illegally on the market. In a recent article, Mark Geller, referring to the situation in Iraq, states: ?Within the past decade, hundreds of Aramaic incantation bowls have appeared on the antiquities market, collected from archaeological sites.? He also writes that: ?Antiquities which were recently exported from their country of origin, such as Iraq, cannot be bought, sold, handled, or studied.?8 In the NRK programme, the investigators filmed a lecture at UCL by Mark Geller and Dan Levene on the inscriptions on the magic bowls in the collection of Martin Sch?yen.9 Erica Hunter asked from the audience about the provenance of the bowls. Levene replied that most of them were unprovenanced.
?Scholarly collusion
To the viewers one of the most surprising revelations of the NRK programme probably was the extent of scholarly involvement there is in the trade. The point was made that when scholars and academic institutions enter into different forms of collaboration with collectors, and start to research and publish unprovenanced objects ? in effect, they legitimize them. Therefore the programme questioned why respectable scholars, such as Jens Braarvig, Mark Geller, Dan Levene, Shaul Shaked and others, would publish objects in the Sch?yen collection despite their questionable origin.
Although not explicitly stated in the programme, it also provided a didactic example of how scholars who publish such objects become dependent upon the goodwill of the collector and how this dependency influences scholarly judgement. Braarvig, responsible for publishing the Sch?yen collection, stated in the programme that if there were illicit objects in the collection, he would disclose the fact. Yet, as mentioned above, he had neglected to make known information that would have contradicted the official story of a rescue operation from the Taliban. From the interview it was also clear that Braarvig did not question Sch?yen?s legal or moral rights to own (or sell) the objects in his collection. This shows one additional motivation for collectors to give scholars the privilege to publish their collections: by doing so they gain steady allies ? with all the credentials that come with academic titles ? who are willing to stand up and defend their right to collect and to possess.10
One of the most interesting parts of the programme dealt with how Buddhist manuscripts came into vogue among the collectors ? and it was implied that in this respect too scholars had become pawns in the games of the market-makers. The investigators managed to interview a London-based smuggler, who said that when the manuscripts started to come on to the market in 1993 and 1994, there was hardly any demand for them. The situation changed when the British Library acquired a number of manuscripts. When announcing the acquisition, the manuscripts were hailed as a sensational discovery and comparable in significance to the Dead Sea scrolls.11 The programme interviewed Graham Shaw, who is responsible for the Asian collections at the British Library, and who said that the manuscripts were first brought to the Library ?for advice on conservation?. This sounds like an innocent motive for bringing texts to a library, but in the programme it was suggested that the real reason for making this material known to the British Library was more sinister. It may have been a marketing strategy, based on the calculation that an acquisition by such a prestigious institution would stimulate the market. Regardless of whether the British Library was deliberately manipulated or not, the news of its acquisition aroused the interest of collectors.12 Among the collectors who were now eager to acquire this kind of material was Martin Sch?yen, who in 1996 made his first purchase of Buddhist manuscript fragments from Sam Fogg. By 1998 he had bought 10,000 manuscript fragments.
When the NRK interviewer suggested to Shaw on screen that the British Library, by its act of acquisition, had stimulated the market and started off a looting campaign, Shaw did not seem very happy. He said he refused to answer such a ?totally unfair question?, stood up, took off the microphone, and walked off.
The programme did not give further details on how the manuscripts were acquired by the British Library, but an article in The Art Newspaper reported that
the scrolls had been sold by Robert Senior, a coin dealer who is currently based in Somerset. The purchase price has never been disclosed, but it has been suggested that the texts were purchased and donated to the library by Neil Kreitman, a specialist in Gandharan art and son of the late Hyman Kreitman, chairman of Tesco supermarkets.
?
According to this article, the manuscripts are believed to have been looted near Hadda in Afghanistan in 1992.13 Another article reports that the purchase price was ?a five-figure sum?.14 The British Library defended its acquisition by arguing that the manuscripts were in need of urgent conservation work and that the Library wanted to make them ?available to the international scholarly community?.
Clearly there is a moral dilemma when material of great scholarly value but with uncertain provenance is offered on the market.15 Any scholar may instinctively feel an urge to rescue the material by acquiring it, especially if it comes from a war-torn country where there are no functioning institutions able to take care of it. Yet, in the case of the manuscripts acquired by the British Library, the alleged price throws some doubt on the notion that the British Library saved them. Does not the five-figure price suggest that there were other prospective saviours available and that the Library was in competition with them? Why did the British Library have to compete with them? Which collector, willing to pay a five-figure sum, would have refused to make the material available to scholars? Collectors do not hide away their collections. Collectors want their collections to be studied as it enhances their own social status, as well the collection?s economic value.
Looting will only come to a halt when collectors refuse to purchase unprovenanced material. Of course, even without a market, chance finds would still be made, and it could be argued that if the objects appearing this way were devoid of monetary value they would be destroyed. A case in point would be the above-mentioned Zargaraan manuscripts which started to blow over the countryside after a landslide. Still, any acquisitions of material of great scholarly importance from another country should only be made by, or on behalf of, an internationally-recognized body, with the purpose of keeping the material in trust until conditions permit its return to the country of origin. The only acceptable forms of acquisition are by donation or, if purchase is absolutely necessary, by payment of modest sums that will not spur further looting.16 Public information about acquisitions has to be worded so as not to stimulate commercial interest in the type of material in question. Acquisitions should not be made by public or private collectors who confuse a desire to enrich their own collections with protecting the world?s cultural heritage, and who directly or indirectly inject large sums of money into the trade.
The effects of the broadcast
This truly shocking and excellently produced programme made an impact in Norway and abroad. Two days after the broadcast of the first part of the programme, Oslo University decided to put a halt to research on the manuscripts. The same day, the Pakistani ambassador to Norway demanded the return of the Gilgit manuscripts to Pakistan. Sch?yen, apparently taken aback by the media attention, quickly replied that he agreed to repatriate them, and in March 2005 they were handed over to the Pakistani embassy. As related in the programme, Sch?yen has also offered to return the manuscript fragments stolen from the Kabul museum. However, what Sch?yen intends to do with the remaining Afghani manuscripts in his possession is uncertain. Afghanistan?s Minister of Culture, Sayyed Raheen, had already in 2003 made a claim for restitution. Sch?yen refused to give them back at the time, and there is no indication that he has changed his mind since. In view of Sch?yen?s indifference to the Afghan request, it might be worth quoting the words of Sayyed Raheen, who was interviewed in the programme. Raheen recalled the calamities which had befallen Afghanistan, with 1.5 million dead during 23 years of conflict, and said: ?I hope everyone will think about the moral duty they have regarding the people of Afghanistan, and I am sure no man with clear mind and heart will take advantage of our disastrous situation.?
As a result of the programme, the Afghan government have now also requested the return of the scrolls in the British Library. A spokesman for the British Library has said that ?the library would be willing to consider a claim?, but the outcome of this consideration is not yet known. UCL has launched an enquiry into the provenance of the magic bowls, though it has not yet reached any conclusions. In March 2005 Braarvig declared he would resign from his position as coordinator of research and publication of the material in the Sch?yen collection. In April 2005 the programme was awarded a diploma for excellence in investigative journalism by the Norwegian Foundation for Investigative Journalism, Stiftelsen for en Kritisk och Unders?kende Presses (SKUP).
?The human right to culture
Skriftsamleren is an eye-opening expos? of the illicit antiquities trade. In my opinion, one of the most powerful and thought-provoking moments was when the programme quoted a claim made by Sch?yen in a radio interview that because there are regimes which are not able to take care of their own cultural heritage, others have to step in to save it. Cut to Mozaffar Ali, the representative of the local administration in Gilgit, standing in the Gilgit ruins saying:
?Everyone knows that this is a historically important area. If the authorities had protected it, we could have had a museum here. But now there is nothing to stop the Pathans, the Europeans and others from enriching themselves. They have destroyed our cultural heritage.
The words of Ali so clearly capture what Sch?yen and other collectors have failed to understand: that people of modest means in developing countries may also want, and have a right to, a cultural heritage. The wealthy collectors of the world support a trade which deprives human beings of this fundamental right. Ali?s words also show that the trade cannot be justified on the grounds that certain regimes or countries are not interested in preserving their cultural heritage. Any such statement is a gross over-simplification of economic and political realities. Cultural heritage is the object of power struggles between different interest groups ? those who seek to preserve it and those who seek to exploit it for monetary gain. In developing countries, the latter group often has the strongest financial resources and the best political connections.
Those collectors who see themselves as bene-factors of culture and have money to spend must choose which side to support in this conflict. Why did Sch?yen, and the other bidders for Buddhist manuscripts, not put their money instead into a cultural heritage project in Gilgit? Such a project could have funded archaeological excavations, the creation of a local museum and perhaps also a travelling exhibition to Norway, the UK and Japan. Had Sch?yen spent his money in this way he would have deserved the international gratitude he so much desires to gain.
The collecting of unprovenanced antiquities will continue as long as it is seen to be socially acceptable. For a change of attitude to happen, it is essential that the victims of the trade are allowed access to the public forum equal to that enjoyed by those who try to justify it. Clearly, the inhabitants of developing countries like Pakistan have far fewer opportunities to make themselves heard in the debate over the trade that is taking place in the market countries than do dealers, collectors and the retinue of scholars who support them. Perhaps the greatest merit of this programme was that it, for once, presented one of the least heard voices in the debate ? the voice of one of the many who suffer the consequences of the trade.
?Notes
1.? The programme (in Norwegian but with many of the interviews in English) was shown in the NRK current affairs series ?Brennpunkt? and can be viewed through the NRK website (http://www.nrk.no). All translations from Norwegian in this article are by the author. After the broadcast Sch?yen complained unsuccessfully to the Norwegian Press Complaints Commission, Pressens faglige utvalg (PFU). The submissions provided by Sch?yen?s lawyers and by NRK are publicly available from PFU (no. 184/04), and provide extensive background information for the contents of the programme. See also O. Flyum, ?SKUP-rapport for NRK Brennpunkts prosjekter. Skriftsalmeren. De magiska krukkene?. This document can be downloaded from the website ?Buddhist manuscripts from Afghanistan in the Sch?yen collection? (http://folk.uio.no/atleom/manuscripts.htm). This website, maintained by Atle Omland of Oslo University, gives a wealth of material on the controversies surrounding the Sch?yen collection. Omland?s forthcoming article ?Claiming Gandhara: legitimising ownership of Buddhist manuscripts in the Sch?yen collection, Norway?, in: J. van Krieken (ed.), Art and Archaeology in Afghanistan, its Fall and Survival, together with Omland & Prescott (2002) and Prescott & Omland (2003) also discuss the issue. I am indebted to Atle Omland for showing me his forthcoming article before publication.
2.? The introduction page of the Sch?yen collection?s website informs us that the proceeds from the sale of the collection are to go to a fund named ?The Sch?yen Human Rights Foundation? (http://www.nb.no/baser/Sch?yen/intro.html). The fund will give emergency aid and fight poverty in emerging nations and promote freedom of speech and human rights worldwide. In the terminology of the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, it could be said that Sch?yen, by putting money into this fund, wants to transform his economic capital into social capital. It is a common behaviour among collectors to try to exchange their collections for social recognition, often by means of selling, donating or bequeathing the collection to a reputable museum or institution, on the condition that the collection retains the name of the collector for eternity. Sch?yen attempts a slightly different strategy by selling the collection and using the proceeds for a fund named after himself.
3.? According to Flyum (?SKUP-rapport?, 7), one of these was an infamous smuggler who also dealt in arms and drugs.
4.? In the fax (presented on the NRK website) Sch?yen writes that he wants a refund of $37,500 from the dealer for three ?Indus script? fragments that had turned out to be fakes. It seems that these fragments were the ones said to have come from the cave. Not surprisingly, market demand for ancient texts has led not only to looting but also to the production of forgeries. Looting is often described with the simile of tearing the pages of the book of history. With the production of fake texts, new pages are added and history is, quite literally, rewritten.
5.? In the wake of the programme, supporters of Sch?yen and Braarvig claimed that the allegations of secrecy were false, because the scholars working on the material had revealed in academic lectures that some of the material originated from the Kabul museum and Gilgit. Yet it remains a fact that the scholars did not make this crucial information available to the general public in Norway, nor to the Afghan authorities, despite the facts that questions about the origin of the collection were repeatedly raised in Norway, and that the Afghan Minister of Culture had requested the return of the material.
6.? On the legislation, see Brodie (2003).
7.? According to the NRK submission to the PFU complaint and Flyum (SKUP-rapport, 18) a source inside Iraq had to be kept anonymous for security reasons. He had narrowly escaped two assassination attempts, in which one person was killed and another severely injured. These murder attempts were probably linked to his knowledge of the illicit trade. If nothing else, the toll of human lives taken by the trade (on which see Brodie et al. (2000, 16); further recent incidents include four police officers killed in Afghanistan in 2003 and eight in Iraq in 2004) should reveal the absurdity of the idea that society owes gratitude to dealers and collectors.
8.? ?Spies, thieves and the cultural heritage?, at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/hebrew-jewish/ijs/news.htm.
9.? The lecture also dealt with bowls in the collection of Schlomo Moussaieff. According to the PFU documents the c. 50 bowls in Moussaieff?s collection were also brought to the UK on the Rihani export licence.
10.In earlier discussions in the Norwegian media Braarvig had also supported Sch?yen?s ownership. More recently, Braarvig has stated that Afghanistan, after all, is the right place for the manuscripts to be. He has suggested that the Norwegian state should purchase them from Sch?yen and donate them to Afghanistan. Needless to say, if such a purchase were to take place it would send a signal down the chain of dealers and looters that there is still a market for Afghani loot and it would only serve to stimulate further pillaging.
??? As to scholarly ethics it may be mentioned that Braarvig and other scholars had already come into contact with Sch?yen in 1997, when the collection of Buddhist manuscripts was still being augmented (the purchases continued until 2001). It would be interesting to know if any of these scholars ever had a discussion with Sch?yen on the wisdom of purchasing these items. In 2003, Sch?yen stated that he had decided to stop collecting archaeological objects. It seems that this decision came as a result of criticisms expressed in the Norwegian media, not because of advice from any of the scholars working on his collection. Anyway, Sch?yen is to be congratulated for this decision.
11.The manuscripts were acquired in 1994. They were then subject to a lengthy conservation before the British Library publicized the acquisition in 1996.
12.That the British Library?s acquisition boosted the market has also been observed by Matsuda Kazunobu (who belongs to the Sch?yen collection research group. He writes: ?This news [i.e. the announcement of the acquisition] caused a sensation in the academic world. [...] Not only researchers, but the world?s manuscript collectors paid attention to the news. Among them was a Norwegian, who promptly responded through dealers in London and built up an amazing collection in just one year?s time? (2000, 99). Kazunobu?s article is also interesting in that it gives a glimpse of just how much media attention the British Library?s announcement created, including coverage in a Japanese TV documentary as well as in the magazine National Geographic. It is unfortunate that the British Library did not attempt, or failed in its attempts, to take this opportunity to inform the world?s collectors on the ethics of collecting. For further remarks on how different scholarly outreach activities may stimulate the market, see Lund?n (2004, especially 234, 240)
13.Bailey (2004). Bailey refers to the programme as the source but as this information is not contained in programme broadcasted on NRK. I assume the information comes from a version of the programme which has been prepared for an international audience.
14.Alberge (2004).
15.On this so-called ?Rosetta stone dilemma?, cf. Brodie et al. (2000) 46f.
16.And when accepting donations care should be taken that they do not result in an economic or social benefit for the trade.
References
Alberge, D., 2004. Call for return of Afghan scrolls. The Times, 13 September.
Bailey, M., 2004. British Library accused of buying smuggled scrolls. The Art Newspaper November.
Brodie, N., 2003. Editorial. Culture Without Context 13, 4?5.
Brodie, N., J. Doole & P. Watson, 2000. Stealing History:the Illicit Trade in Cultural Material. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
Kazunobu, M., 2000. New Sanskrit fragments of the Saddharmapu.n.dariikasuutra in the Sch?yen Collection, Norway. Journal of Oriental Studies 5.10, 97?108. (Available at: http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-JOS/jos94088.htm.)
Lund?n, S., 2004. The scholar and the market. Swedish scholarly contributions to the destruction of the world?s cultural heritage, in Swedish Archaeologists on Ethics, ed. H. Karlsson. Lindome: Bricoleur Press, 197?247.
Omland, A. & C. Prescott, 2002. Afghanistan?s cultural heritage in Norwegian museums? Culture Without Context 11, 4?7.
Prescott, C. & A. Omland, 2003. The Sch?yen Collection in Norway: demand for the return of objects and questions about Iraq. Culture Without Context 13, 8?11.
Editor?s note
The British Library has supplied Culture Without Context with a statement and documents relating to its acquisition of the manuscript fragments mentioned in this review. The British Library?s statement will be printed in the next issue of Culture Without Context and its actions concerning the acquisition will be discussed in more detail.
