Solomon;
Your link
Skriftsamleren certainly expands the situation immensely.
There is no question as to the spin of the Skoyen Collection's public statements. For Skoyen to file in court to prevent the airing of the documentary is indeed a black mark against him, no spin can whitewash that attempt. Skoyen is obviously a prevaricator and a knowing trafficker in looted antiquities.
The whole business of these antiquities has an odor that taints all involved. Even the statement you quoted from the documentary is spin, a very generous categorization of one of the involved factions. I fail to see how such actions below can be called naive by any stretch of the imagination.
I don't know what the answer to the whole problem is. I doubt it will ever change as long as there are large profits to be made in it. No one is without blame here.
It doesn't appear that the current laws are enforced, few seem to get charged with offenses, and the sentences seem to be light for those convicted of violations. The law enforcement equation seems to be mentioned least of all when the whole scenario is publicized. What good are the laws if they aren't enforced? They obviously do not deter the looting to any great extent, and as long as there is money to be made, it appears that the slight risk of prosecution is willingly taken on as part of doing business.
I don't see that outlawing private collections is the answer either, but it may come to that. Somehow the money needs to be taken out of the equation, but I doubt that will ever happen.
- Bart
"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 (They were promised a look at the bowls, but the offer was later withdrawn, because, it was claimed, the keys to the store could not be found).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."
"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."
"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."
"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.
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."
