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April 13, 2012
An exodus from Egypt
Israeli antiquities police nab ancient sarcophagi.
ARIEH O’SULLIVAN THE MEDIA LINE
Israeli antiquity rangers have nabbed a pair of 3,000-year-old sarcophagus covers stolen by grave robbers in Egypt that were smuggled to an antiquities merchant in Israel for sale to the highest bidder.
The covers were made out of palm wood covered in plaster and adorned with hieroglyphics. They are believed to have been unearthed in an illegal dig somewhere in western Egypt, after which the grave robbers sawed them in half in order to smuggle them out in a suitcase, said officials from the Israel Antiquities Authority on April 3.
“We were conducting a routine check of antiquity merchants when we came upon these two precious covers,” Shai Bar-Tura, the deputy head of the Unit for the Prevention of the Theft of Antiquities, told this reporter.
He said wooden sarcophagi of this kind have only been found in Egypt, where they are preserved thanks to the extraordinarily dry desert climate. Officials confiscated the two covers for examination and Carbon-14 dating. Tests showed that they were authentic: one dated from somewhere between the 10th to eighth centuries BCE and the other was older, from between the 16th and 14th century BCE, or the late bronze age.
The covers, which were originally about two metres long before they were cut in half, traditionally form the lid of a sarcophagus. The mummies themselves were not found. Because the sarcophagi were made out of organic material, they are being held under climate-controlled conditions while arrangements are made to get them back to Egypt, Bar-Tura explained.
“These were looted by grave robbers from Egypt,” he said, adding that Egyptian authorities have submitted a request asking that they be repatriated. The Israel Police, Antiquities Authority and Foreign Ministry are currently working out the details to return the items.
According to Bar-Tura, the merchant told the rangers that he bought the covers from someone who had imported them from Dubai. In the murky world of antiquity deals, Israel is often the preferred destination to ship and sell antiquities because it is one of the very few countries in the world that allows the sale of ancient items.
Israeli officials argue that, if antiquity trade were outlawed, it would go underground, away from supervision, such as happened in other Mediterranean countries where it is banned, including Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Jordan.
The law lets traders bring items into Israel so long as they provide documentation and commercial provenance. Bar-Tura said this is about to change, with new regulations that will now require all imports of antiquities to be examined by the Israel Antiquity Authority and an import licence issued. This would help ensure that only legal items are imported.
“Beginning on April 20, there will be a new reality in the antiquities trade in Israel,” Bar-Tura noted. “The new regulation will provide us with the tools in order to prevent the importation into the country of antiquities that were stolen or plundered in other countries, thus enabling us to thwart the international cycle of robbery and trade in stolen archeological artifacts.”
Bar-Tura said he believes the sarcophagi covers were imported about a year ago. The Israeli authorities confiscated them six months ago and only recently released the details to the media.
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