PARIS (AP) – France’s culture minister agreed Friday to return painted wall fragments to Egypt after a row over their ownership prompted the country to cut ties with the Louvre Museum.
Experts with France’s national museum authority met to discuss the painted wall fragments from a 3,200-year-old tomb near the ancient temple city of Luxor, and recommended that France return them, according to an official with the Culture Ministry.
The ministry will comply with the recommendation, said the official, who was not authorized to be publicly named according to ministry policy. It was not immediately clear when the works would be sent to Egypt.
Egypt’s antiquities chief took his campaign to recover the nation’s lost treasures to a new level Wednesday by cutting ties with the Louvre over the artifacts.
It was the most aggressive effort yet by Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s tough and media savvy chief archaeologist, to reclaim what he says are antiquities stolen from the country and purchased by leading world museums.
Thousands of antiquities were spirited out of the country during Egypt’s colonial period and afterward by archaeologists, adventurers and thieves.
The move could jeopardize the Louvre’s future excavations in the country. Egypt suspended the Louvre’s excavation in the massive necropolis of Saqqara, near Cairo, and canceled a lecture by a former curator from France’s premier museum.
After Hawass’ announcement Wednesday, both the Louvre and France’s Culture Ministry said they were ready to return the pieces.
Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand, who said the items were acquired by the Louvre in “good faith” in 2000 and 2003, had ordered museum experts to meet first to study the issue.
Hawass’ office described the disputed fragments as pieces of a burial fresco showing the nobleman Tetaki’s journey to the afterlife, and said thieves chipped them from the walls of the tomb near the Valley of the Kings in the 1980s.
Meanwhile in Miami, the United States is taking legal steps to return a stolen 3,000-year-old sarcophagus to Egypt.
Federal prosecutors filed court papers Thursday seeking forfeiture of the ancient artifact. It wound up in Miami last year following a series of transactions that began at an antique dealership in Barcelona, Spain.
A Florida businessman who bought it from the Spanish dealer gave up all rights to it. Egyptian authorities say the sarcophagus was probably illegally excavated years ago. It is made out of wood and is yellow, covered by elaborate hieroglyphics and symbols. Prosecutors say it was built between 1070 and 946 B.C. for the mummified remains of an unknown person.
Virtually all such antiquities belong to the Egyptian government. The court case would allow for the sarcophagus to return to Egypt.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CAIRO (AP) – Egypt’s antiquities department has severed its ties with France’s Louvre museum because it has refused to return what are described as stolen artifacts, an official statement declared Wednesday.
The ruling means that no archeological expeditions connected to the France’s premier museum will be allowed to work in Egypt. Already a lecture in Egypt by a former Louvre curator has been canceled.
“The Louvre Museum refused to return four archeological reliefs to Egypt that were stolen during the 1980s from the tomb of the noble Tetaki,” near the famed temple city of Luxor, the statement said, quoting antiquities head Zahi Hawass.
Christiane Ziegler, the former director of the Louvre’s Egyptology department, acquired the four reliefs last year and displayed them, said the statement. She will now not be allowed to give a scheduled lecture in Egypt.
Upon taking the helm of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities in 2002, Hawass made recovering stolen Egyptian antiquities a priority.
He issued a regulation, that he says was agreed to by all major international museums including the Louvre, banning the acquiring or display of stolen antiquities.
Hawass has made several high profile requests from the world’s museum for the return of Egyptian artifacts.
At the top of Hawass’ request list are the bust of Nefertiti – wife of the famed monotheistic Pharaoh Akhenaten – and the Rosetta Stone, a basalt slab with an inscription that was the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics. The bust is in Berlin’s Egyptian Museum; the Rosetta Stone is in the British Museum in London.
Hawass said Egypt also was seeking “unique artifacts” from at least 10 museums around the world, including the Louvre in Paris and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.
Hawass also has written to request the bust of Anchhaf – the builder of the Chephren Pyramid – from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the statue of Hemiunu – nephew of the Pharaoh Khufu, builder of the largest pyramid – from Germany’s Roemer-Pelizaeu museum.
Hawass long has sought items taken from Egypt, recently succeeding in winning the return from France of hair stolen from the mummy of Ramses II.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Mummy at The Vatican, photographed Dec. 18, 2006 by Joshua Sherurcij.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – The tightly wrapped fabric that holds the mummified remains of Hetep-Bastet contain indications of what may have killed her 2,500 years ago. The sarcophagus that served as her vessel bears the scars of more recent history.
The mummy, on display at the “World of the Pharaohs” exhibition in Little Rock that opens Friday, is on loan from University of Quebec at Montreal, where the coffin was damaged in a student protest in 1969.
A CT scan of the mummy taken last year revealed that Hetep-Bastet had abscessed teeth and a broken femur and hip, which may have become infected and caused or contributed to her death. There are conflicting estimates of her age, from about 40 to about 60.
Hetep-Bastet’s tooth problems came as no surprise to Egyptologist and mummy expert Bob Brier. During a walk through the exhibit Wednesday, Brier noted grain of the time contained bits of the stone used to grind it, along with sand that blew in, and wore down teeth. With the tooth pulp exposed, people were at great risk of dangerous infections.
“That was a common cause of death,” said Brier, the author of The Murder of Tutankhamen and other books on ancient Egypt.
The exhibition has two mummies, the other of which is from the Roman period and shows evidence of the diminished skills among craftsmen who weren’t valued by the western rulers. The coarsely drawn figures on its coffin don’t have the correct animal images and some are mislabeled.
The coffin of Hetep-Bastet, dating to between 644 and 525 B.C., is much more skillfully painted, showing gold and red and earth tones. Brier noted that she is depicted on a funeral couch with four canopic jars underneath, where her organs would be stored so she could use them in the afterlife. Anubis, the jackal-headed god of embalming, stands over her.
Much of the exhibit’s 200-plus items were found in tombs, collected by an archaeologist in the early 20th century working for Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which loaned the items for the show, except the mummies.
One of the first objects patrons will see is an upper fragment of a granite colossus of Ramses the Great.
Many scholars believe Ramses the Great, who built fabulous monuments in his 67-year reign, was the pharaoh during the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt.
“This is the only face from the Bible that you can ever see,” Brier said. “This is what the guy looked like when he was young.”
On the left rear is a hieroglyphic inscription with Ramses’ name and the image of a cobra with a solar disk.
Brier, who has studied images of Ramses II’s mummy, said the pharaoh had a sizable hole in his mandible, indicating he also had a terrible tooth infection.
“I think the pharaoh of the Exodus had a lot of pain,” Brier said.
The mummies are an important part of the exhibit, but the other human images carry an immediacy that can be more powerful than art from other cultures, Brier said.
“It’s super-realism,” he said. “It’s not two-dimensional, flat, like looking at Medieval paintings,” he said. “You’re looking across 2,000 years or more. It’s the realism, and that they’re so old.”
The Hetep-Bastet mummy was a gift in 1927 from the Cairo Museum of Antiquitiesto the precursor of the University of Quebec. Its rest was disturbed when the sarcophagus was knocked over during a protest against the university’s administration 40 years ago.
Arkansas Arts Center Curator Joe Lampo said the coffin sustained significant damage.
“The central part of the top of the coffin was split down the middle,” Lampo said. Another piece that broke off is in a separate display.
Some of the paint flaked from the casket, which conservators at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec, recently restored. Lampo said there were “many” tiny fragments that were meticulously fitted back in place. But museum patrons who look carefully will be able to see the white undercoat that was applied to the wood, which was then painted, and how bits could easily become dislodged in a jostling, he said.
The “World of the Pharaohs” exhibit runs through July 5, 2010. Adult admission is $22, though various discounts are available for groups, children, seniors and military.
LONDON – It’s an unprecedented find that could revolutionize ideas about medieval England’s Germanic rulers: An amateur treasure-hunter searching a farmer’s field with a metal detector unearthed a huge collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver artifacts.
The discovery sent a thrill through Britain’s archaeological community, which said Thursday that it offers new insight into the world of the Anglo-Saxons, who ruled England from the fifth century until the 1066 Norman invasion and whose cultural influence is still felt throughout the English-speaking world.
“This is just a fantastic find completely out of the blue,” Roger Bland, who managed the cache’s excavation, told The Associated Press. “It will make us rethink the Dark Ages.”
The treasure trove includes intricately designed helmet crests embossed with a frieze of running animals, enamel-studded sword fittings and a checkerboard piece inlaid with garnets and gold. One gold band bore a biblical inscription in Latin calling on God to drive away the bearer’s enemies.
The Anglo-Saxons were a group of Germanic tribes who invaded England starting in the wake of the collapse of the Roman Empire. Their artisans made striking objects out of gold and enamel, and their language, Old English, is a precursor of modern English.
The cache of gold and silver pieces was discovered in what was once Mercia, one of five main Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and is thought to date to between 675 and 725.
For Terry Herbert, the unemployed metal-detecting enthusiast who made the discovery on July 5 while scouring a friend’s farm in the western region of Staffordshire, it was “more fun than winning the lottery.”
The 55-year-old spent five days searching the field alone before he realized he needed help and notified authorities. Professional archaeologists then took over the find.
“I was going to bed and in my sleep I was seeing gold items,” Herbert said of the experience.
The gold alone in the collection weighs 11 pounds and suggests that early medieval England was a far wealthier place than previously believed, according to Leslie Webster, the former curator of Anglo-Saxon archaeology at the British Museum. She said the crosses and other religious artifacts mixed in with the military items might shed new light on the relationship between Christianity and warfare among the Anglo-Saxons – in particular a large cross she said may have been carried into battle.
The hoard was officially declared treasure by a coroner on Thursday, which means it will be valued by experts and offered up for sale to a museum in Britain. Proceeds will be split 50-50 between Herbert and his farmer friend, who has not been identified. The find’s exact location is being kept secret to deter looters.
Bland said he could not give a precise figure for the value of the collection, but said the two could each be in line for a “seven-figure sum.”
Kevin Leahy, the archaeologist who catalogued the find, said the stash includes dozens of pommel caps – decorative elements attached to the knobs of swords – and appeared to be war loot. He noted that “Beowulf,” the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, contains a reference to warriors stripping the pommels of their enemies’ weapons as mementoes.
“It looks like a collection of trophies, but it is impossible to say if the hoard was the spoils from a single battle or a long and highly successful military career,” he said.
“We also cannot say who the original, or the final, owners were, who took it from them, why they buried it or when? It will be debated for decades.”
Experts said they’ve so far examined a total of 1,345 items. But they’ve also recovered 56 pieces of earth that X-ray analysis suggests contain more artifacts – meaning the total could rise to about 1,500.
The craftsmanship was some of the highest-quality ever seen in finds of this kind, Leahy said, and many British archaeologists clearly shared his enthusiasm.
Bland, who has documented discoveries across Britain, called it “completely unique.” Martin Welch, a specialist in Anglo-Saxon archaeology at University College London, said no one had found “anything like this in this country before.”
Herbert said one expert likened his discovery to finding Egyptian Pharoah Tutankhamen’s tomb, adding: “I just flushed all over when he said that. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.”
The collection is in storage at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, where some of the items are to go on display starting Friday.
It’s unclear how the gold ended up in the field, although archaeologists suggested it may have been buried to hide the loot from roving enemies, a common practice at the time. The site’s location is unusual as well – Anglo-Saxon remains have tended to cluster in the country’s south and east, while the so-called “Staffordshire hoard” was found in the west.
In the meantime, archaeologists say they’re likely to be busy for years puzzling out the meaning of some of the collection’s more unusual pieces – like five enigmatic gold snakes or a strip of gold bearing a crudely written and misspelled Biblical inscription in Latin.
“Rise up, O Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face,” reads the inscription, believed to be from the Book of Numbers.
Also of interest is the largest of the crosses, which experts say may have been an altar or processional piece. It had been folded, possibly to make it fit into a small space prior to burial, and the apparent lack of respect shown to such a Christian symbol may point to the hoard being buried by pagans.
“The things that we can’t identify are the ones that are going to teach us something new,” Leahy said.
For England, a country at the edge of Europe whose history owes an enormous debt to the Anglo-Saxons, the find has the potential to become one of its top national treasures, according to Webster.
Caroline Barton, assistant treasure registrar at the British Museum, said objects over 300 years old and made up of more that 10 percent precious metal are only offered for sale to accredited museums in Britain, so the collection will not be leaving the country. ___
Associated Press writer Karolina Tagaris in London contributed to this report. ___
On the Net: http://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
BAGHDAD (AP) – Authorities in northern Iraq have arrested three men on charges they were trying to traffic stolen antiquities, including the bust of a Sumerian king, a local army commander said Saturday.
The three were arrested in a sting operation after attempting to sell one of the artifacts for $160,000 to an undercover intelligence officer of the Iraqi Army’s 12th division in a village southwest of Kirkuk, division commander Maj. Gen. Abdul Amir al-Zaidi told reporters.
The sting operation, which took place around two weeks ago, was set up based on intelligence from local residents, he said.
“The duty of Iraqi army is not only to chase the terrorists but also to protect state treasures,” he said.
In total the men had eight pieces from the Sumerian period, which dates from around 4000 B.C. to 2000 B.C., that they were trying to sell.
A fourth man is still being sought in the case, al-Zaidi said. He gave no further details. It was not clear where the items came from, but after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government, looters stole and smashed priceless treasures from the National Museum in Baghdad and other museums and libraries. At the time, Iraq’s museums held priceless, millennia-old collections from the Assyrian, Sumerian and Babylonian cultures that chronicled some 7,000 years of civilization in ancient Mesopotamia.
Some have been recovered but many remain missing.
Elsewhere in Iraq on Saturday, a roadside bomb killed an 11-year-old boy and wounded his two friends in the violence-plagued northern city of Mosul.
The bomb exploded around 4 p.m. after a police patrol that was the apparent target had already passed by, a Mosul police officer said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
An off-duty Iraqi soldier was also killed in Mosul in a drive-by shooting, he said.
Mosul is in an area rife with tension between Arabs and Kurds over territory. The U.S. military says it is also the last urban battleground of al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni extremist groups. The level of violence there remains high even as it has dropped elsewhere in Iraq. ____
Associated Press Writer Yahya Barzanji contributed to this report from Kirkuk
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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – American Indian tribes should be given the first opportunity to reclaim thousands of ancient Southwest artifacts being seized by the government in its sweeping prosecution of theft and trafficking, the federal appointee in charge of Indian affairs told The Associated Press on Friday.
Tribal leaders will have something to say to the government on this issue, said Larry Echo Hawk, assistant Interior secretary for Indian Affairs.
“The tribes should get first priority,” said. “Native people in their hearts are going to feel a connection.”
Echo Hawk, a law professor on leave from Utah’s Brigham Young University, praised his former student – U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman – for taking a tough stance on looting across tribal and federal lands after decades of government indifference.
The number of defendants in the case has grown to 26 in Utah, New Mexico and Colorado. More indictments are expected out of Arizona.
With the first sentencing Thursday of a major defendant, the government became owner of more than 800 artifacts confiscated from a Blanding, Utah, family. Another five moving vans worth of artifacts have been surrendered by a Colorado antiquities dealer.
Echo Hawk acknowledged repatriating artifacts under federal laws will be arduous. It isn’t always clear which modern tribe can claim ownership of an ancient relic. Sacred and burial objects are supposed to go back to their rightful culture, while the government can keep other artifacts stolen from public lands.
Echo Hawk said he didn’t want to see a wholesale transfer of artifacts squirreled away in public museums. Emily Palus, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s national curator in Washington, D.C., has said it could take years to sort through and properly dispose of the relics.
They range from infant cradle boards to turquoise necklaces, pottery and even human remains – adult molars and infant teeth.
Investigators shared photographs of the seized items with the director of the bureaus of Indian Affairs and Indian Education.
“I looked at those things and didn’t want to see them,” Echo Hawk said. “Many of them would be sacred, part of a burial, private – I didn’t want to look at them. People were trading them, making profits from them, like commodities in the marketplace.”
Echo Hawk, 61, a member of the Great Plains’ Pawnee tribe, took over an agency in May that was marked by a lack of leadership during the Bush administration. It changed directors six times in eight years, with the post left vacant for two of those years.
“The tribes have enormous expectations with the Obama administration,” said Echo Hawk, who has been traveling widely to get a firsthand assessment of problems in Indian Country – the agency is a trustee for 66 million acres of land. “They’re expecting us to deliver.”
The post is tough under the best of circumstances. Echo Hawk, of Orem, Utah – he keeps an apartment in Arlington, Va. – said he was dealing with issues like competing licenses for gaming that often pit tribe against another.
For the past dozen years, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has been embroiled in a lawsuit over Indian trust land. The long-running suit claims the Indians were swindled out of billions of dollars in oil, gas, grazing, timber and other royalties overseen by the Interior Department since 1887.
Echo Hawk was in Salt Lake City on Friday to deliver a keynote speech for the 57th annual Utah State History Conference.
He delivered a characteristically moving speech that covered the sweep of U.S.-Indian relations. Echo Hawk, who carries a heavy burden of injustice, emphasized atrocities committed against American Indians in early U.S. history. By the end he was fighting tears, and he received a standing ovation from the crowd at Salt Lake City’s library.
For a second time in weeks at a Utah conference, Echo Hawk detailed his own difficult decision to accept the job and become a “face” for a federal government with a sordid history of mistreating Indians. He finally reconciled his hesitation by vowing to be an “agent for change” instead of a mere caretaker.
For Echo Hawk, the challenge is trying to solve two centuries of tragedy and injustice in the 39 months he’ll have as an appointee in Obama’s first term in office.
“How do you eat an elephant? You eat it one bite at a time,” Echo Hawk said. “How do you reverse 200 years of struggles? It’s not going to be easy.”
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
This quintet of musical figures was excavated from Han Tomb I in 1972. Image courtesy Hunan Provincial Museum.
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – More than 2,000 years ago, a Chinese marquis and his family began their plans for the afterlife with three lavish tombs in Hunan Province, which were excavated in the 1970s. For the first time in the United States, their extraordinary existence will come to life in the exhibition Noble Tombs at Mawangdui: Art and Life in the Changsha Kingdom, China (3rd Century BCE – 1st Century CE).
Nearly 70 treasures including lacquer ware, wood carvings, jade ornaments, bronze sculptures, seals, and silk costumes and textiles from the Hunan Provincial Museum will be on view at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art from Sept. 19 through Dec. 13, after an exhibition at the China Institute in New York City earlier this year.
The excavation at Mawangdui in southeastern China is considered one of the major archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. The tombs containing the remains and possessions of the Marquis of Dai and his wife and son were found between 1972 and 1974 in the archaeological site of Mawangdui, which is located in a suburb of the modern city of Changsha, Hunan Province. More than 3,000 objects from the Western Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 25) were found in extraordinary condition representing the highest levels of workmanship. The tomb that housed the wares most represented in the exhibition, also held the remarkably well-preserved body of the noblewoman of the family, known affectionately as “Lady Dai.”
“People during the Han dynasty regarded death as birth and longed for immortality,” said Willow Hai Chang, director of the China Institute Gallery. “To prepare for the afterlife, they constructed their tombs to be eternal residences. As a result of this landmark excavation, we now have a rare window into the fascinating Han civilization through these remarkable objects of the highest artistry.”
The extraordinary significance of this assemblage is not only apparent in the variety and quality of objects, but also the period and place from whence these artifacts originated. The Changsha Kingdom was heir to the Chu culture in southeastern China. It played a significant role in the cultural formation of the Han dynasty (202 B.C.-A.D. 220), a defining period in Chinese history that shaped the artistic, intellectual, political, religious and social foundations of Chinese civilization. The objects preserved in the Mawangdui tombs give a visual dimension to early Han Dynasty beliefs, design and technology, while the body of material culture challenges us to re-evaluate our current understanding of early China.
Works in the exhibition showcase those items that were felt to have great meaning to the owner, thereby deeming them necessary in life after death. Many of the objects preserved delicate or perishable materials, such as food, drink and cosmetics, mostly fashioned with wood, silk and paper. Some specific highlights include a two-tiered cosmetic box containing nine small boxes, thought to have belonged to Lady Dai. The outer surface of the box is coated with black lacquer and then affixed with patterned gold foil, and the interior coated with vermilion lacquer. The nine small boxes in the lower tier contained items that could have been found on many women’s dressing tables at the time: cosmetics, rouge, silk powder pads, combs and a needle case.
Of course, what would a journey be to the afterlife without the joy of music. Five charming wooden figurines of musicians, which seem to form a small family band, are included in the exhibition, indicating the importance of song and dance to the tomb occupant. The figures are painted in black and vermilion to depict their faces and colorful gowns.
The tombs at Mawangdui also contained a stunning amount of information in the form of books and tablets on health, well-being and longevity. These findings are particularly intriguing as they represent some of the earliest examples of a cohesive writing style including the Chinese characters that are utilized today. One inscribed tablet refers to dried soybean seeds that have germinated and were used in the treatment of headache, paralysis, asthma and other health problems. Another book, entitled Prescriptions for Maintaining Health, was written on silk and contains 32 different medical prescriptions.
The exhibition also features one remarkably preserved silk robe and textile fragments two of which are the world’s earliest known examples of printed and painted design on gauze weave. From these superb examples, silk was widely used among nobilities in early Han dynasty. The technology of silk production and textile making reached an unprecedented height that is rarely surpassed today. Hunan embroidery remains one of the four celebrated styles of embroidery in China.
Noble Tombs at Mawangdui: Art and Life in the Changsha Kingdom, China is organized by the China Institute Gallery in collaboration with the Hunan Provincial Museum, and is curated by Chen Jianming, director of the Hunan Provincial Museum, who also edited the catalog. A fully illustrated, bilingual catalog accompanies the exhibition.
Free Lecture Series
The Mawangdui finds have spurred enormous scholarly interest. In this multidisciplinary lecture series, specialists in art, archaeology, history and literature will discuss the noble tombs and Chu culture of the Changsha Kingdom, underscoring the significance of Mawangdui by drawing attention to the Yangtze River region as a conduit for cultural exchange and innovation during the early Han dynasty.
All lectures are free and will be held in the Mary Craig Auditorium. Seating is limited.
Mawangdui and Its Place in the History of Chinese Funerary Customs
Sunday, Sept. 27, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
The rich finds from the Mawangdui tombs document local religious conceptions concerning death and the afterlife during the early Han period. Archaeological research over the past half-century allows us to trace the origins of this belief system back to earlier epochs and places. This lecture will show how various customs attested at Mawangdui had developed previously, and it will draw contrasts to contemporaneous practices in other parts of China. Lecturer: Lothar von Falkenhausen, professor of Chinese Art History and Archaeology at UCLA and director pro tem of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA.
Roaming in the Celestial Realm: Immortality and the Imagination in Han Dynasty China
Sunday, Oct. 4, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Among the motifs decorating Han dynasty mortuary objects, including those found in the tomb of the noblewoman at Mawangdui, are clouds and creatures representing an “other world” through which the soul journeys after death. These motifs are especially prevalent in tombs of the first half of the Han dynasty and are clearly relatable to the growth of what has been labeled the immortality cult-a melding of longstanding religious notions of what happens after death with a popular fascination with the idea of attaining everlasting life. Expansion of the Han Empire during this time further fueled the imagination of what lay beyond. This lecture will survey and contextualize many of the exquisite objects found in Western Han tombs, including the famous painted banner and coffins of Mawangdui, to demonstrate the creative burst of artistic imagination that accompanied the speculative flights of Han dynasty belief. Lecturer: Peter Sturman, professor of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, Department of the History of Art and Architecture at UCSB.
Rethinking Early China in Light of the Mawangdui Finds
Sunday, Oct.18, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Many of the archaeological discoveries at Mawangdui have great artistic merit and aesthetic appeal. Beyond these qualities, however, the Mawangdui finds suggest that certain of our assumptions about early China, until now based on Confucian canonical texts, need serious reconsideration. As such the archaeological finds at Mawangdui are a powerful reminder of the narrowness of the elite textual tradition and the important place that should be given to evidence of material culture in our reconstructions of ancient civilizations. This talk examines the ways that the Mawangdui finds challenge us to rethink our understanding of early China. Lecturer: Ron Egan, professor of Chinese Literature and Aesthetics, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at UCSB.
Artisans of Ancient China
Sunday, Nov. 15, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
In viewing objects like those found at Mawangdui, their anonymous creators generally remain in obscurity. This lecture focuses on these oft forgotten individuals, the men and women who crafted objects in private workshops and government factories during the Han Dynasty. Among the topics to be discussed are artisan training, societal perception, tools and techniques, and marketing. Special attention will be given to lacquer workshops and artisans, like those that produced the beautiful pieces in the current exhibition. Lecturer: Anthony Barbieri-Low, associate professor of Ancient China, Chinese Archaeology, and Epigraphy, Department of History at UCSB.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is a privately funded, not-for-profit institution that presents internationally recognized collections and exhibitions and a broad array of cultural and educational activities as well as travel opportunities around the world.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara, Calif., is open Tuesday – Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; closed Monday. Phone 805-963-4364 or visit the Web site www.sbma.net.
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
A cloud pattern and inscriptions ‘Jun Xing Jiu’ and ‘Si Sheng,’ are found on this lacquer flanged cup. Image courtesy Hunan Provincial Museum. Archeologists found this lacquer two-tiered cosmetic box containing nine small boxes in Han Tomb I. Image courtesy Hunan Provincial Museum. ‘Prescriptions for Maintaining Health’ were copied onto this silk page more than 2,000 years ago. Image courtesy Hunan Provincial Museum. This silk cloth is decorated with Chengyun embroidery having a double bird and lozenge design. Image courtesy Hunan Provincial Museum.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – Once the legal dust settles from the nation’s biggest bust of Southwestern artifact looting, federal officials face another daunting task: deciding what to do with the ancient sandals, pipes, pendants and thousands of other items associated with the investigation.
It could take years to sort through the ancient Native American relics – seven truckloads have been collected already this summer – and determine where each should go, said Emily Palus, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s national curator in Washington, D.C.
Most of the items from those found guilty will likely end up in hand-picked public museums in the Four Corners region or with an American Indian tribe.
“Ultimately the people will benefit. Collections will be curated and made available to the public for research and exhibitions,” Palus said.
Federal officials have done this kind of work before – violations of national archaeological laws aren’t rare – but Palus can’t remember facing the prospect of finding homes for so many objects related to criminal cases.
For now, the items taken by government agents remain boxed in a secure, climate-controlled building in Salt Lake City. Most are carefully wrapped in acid-free paper and surrounded by special foam or other protective material, Palus said.
They range from the very fragile, like ancient sandals woven from reeds, to more robust items like boulders used for processing corn.
Federal agents spent more than two years on the investigation, building criminal cases based largely on recorded deals between an artifacts dealer secretly working for the government and a variety of buyers, sellers and collectors.
So far, 26 people from Utah, Colorado and New Mexico have been indicted for illegally taking or trafficking in artifacts from public or tribal lands. Two have committed suicide, two pleaded guilty this summer and the rest have pleaded not guilty.
The fate of the artifacts collected by the government will first be determined by the outcome of the legal cases. Those found not guilty will get their items back. Artifacts from those found guilty will begin a long process of disposition.
Work on the first batch may begin soon.
Jeanne Redd and her daughter Jerrica are scheduled to be sentenced in Salt Lake City on Wednesday. They pleaded guilty to several felony charges in July. As part of the plea deal, they relinquished their entire artifact collections, which required two moving trucks to haul away.
Last month, federal agents used five moving trucks to loaded thousands of artifacts from the Durango, Colo., home of antiquities dealer Vern Crites, who surrendered his collection after being named in federal charges earlier this summer.
Still other items were seized in a series of arrests in June in southern Utah.
If sacred or ceremonial objects are returned to the Navajo Nation, officials there will look for a tribal member who can use them in ceremonies, said Alan Downer, manager of the Navajo Nation’s historic preservation department.
“We don’t want to see them go unused,” Downer said.
Archaeological objects will be dealt with individually. Downer said displaying certain artifacts may not be consistent with Navajo traditions.
Still, they’d be happy to get back any items illegally taken from tribal land.
“The sense around here is that this is a good thing,” Downer said.
Human remains, burial and sacred objects from federal land will be dealt with under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which requires that items affiliated with native people be returned to tribes.
Other items from public land will be categorized, researched and placed with museums and other institutions that meet federal guidelines to make sure they are treated well, safely protected and made available to the public or researchers.
There are about 10 museums in the region that might qualify for artifacts from the Four Corners cases, Palus said.
“We’d certainly be interested,” said Duncan Metcalfe, chief curator at the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah.
Although the much of the scientific value has been lost because the items were apparently removed from the ground without careful archaeological study, there’s still a benefit for researchers, he said.
“The arsenal of techniques we have for examining individual items has increased dramatically over the last 10 years,” Metcalfe said.
Museums, though, will have to temper their enthusiasm for the artifacts with the reality of a commitment to make sure they’re stored properly, safeguarded from the elements and handled according to the government’s requirements, he said.
That all requires money and space, which is often in short supply at museums.
Palus said the federal government would likely provide some kind of initial payment for institutions to take care of the objects.
Some of the items could end up back at the epicenter of this summer’s artifacts raids: Blanding, Utah, the hometown of 17 of those charged. The city’s Edge of the Cedars Museum has taken items from criminal cases in the past and meets federal requirements, said director Teri Paul.
The museum, like others, has limited amounts of exhibit space. But Paul said they try to rotate most items through their exhibits at least once a year.
Providing public access to the objects taken from public land is one upside to cracking artifact trafficking cases, Palus said.
“Otherwise, they would remain in living room, basements and garages,” she said.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Unique edition of Leonardo’s Codex Atlanticus as it was in the 1600s. The book is a box made by Pompeo Leoni to collect and secure all of the pages. 2007 photo by Mario Taddei. Licensed under Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
MILAN (AP) – The entirety of Leonardo da Vinci’s 1,119-page Atlantic Codex is going on public display for the first time.
The Atlantic Codex is considered an encyclopedia of technical knowledge from the Renaissance, representing not only Leonardo’s own creations but technology as it existed.
The entire collection will be shown in a series of 24 exhibitions spanning six years.
The first exhibition featuring 45 drawings and called “Fortresses, Bastions and Cannons” opened yesterdaty at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana and the Santa Maria delle Grazie church, which also holds Leonardo’s fresco The Last Supper.
Each drawing will be shown inside a double-chamber Plexiglas case that maintains a constant temperature and humidity.
An exhibition featuring sketches for Leonardo’s sculptural work opens at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art next month.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Four Corners region is in the red area on this map. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – A Colorado antiquities dealer is surrendering a vast personal collection of ancient artifacts in another break in the federal investigation of looting and grave-robbing in the Four Corners region.
More than 20 government agents, archaeologists and curators descended early Wednesday on a home in Durango, Colo., to haul away a lifetime collection from 74-year-old Carl “Vern” Crites and his wife.
The Bureau of Land Management said the couple was voluntarily turning over its entire collection, which one agent described as staggering. Two moving vans were at the house. Court papers say the items include prayer sticks, ivory beads and a ceremonial war club.
Crites and his wife, Marie, are under indictment for trafficking, theft and grave desecration.
“It’s enormously traumatic for them,” said Wally Bugden, a Salt Lake City lawyer representing Vern Crites. “He’s collected artifacts for 50-plus years, as have many people in the Four Corners area. Whether they were legally obtained or not is obviously the issue.”
According to court papers, some of the artifacts were pilfered from federal lands in Utah. But BLM spokesman Steven Hall said it would take examinations by archaeologists to determine the origin of each artifact. Some are believed by investigators to be thousands of years old.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney for Utah, Brett Tolman, said the surrender was not being made in tandem with a plea deal.
“We can’t confirm any plea deal until one is executed, and right now there isn’t one,” said spokeswoman Melodie Rydalch. “We expect a judge to set a trial in this case just like all of the other cases.”
The surrender, together with a similar hand-over earlier this summer by Jeanne Redd of Blanding, Utah, recovers some of the biggest collections at the center of a 2 1/2-year sting operation, which resulted in felony charges against 25 people. Two of them committed suicide, another two quickly pleaded guilty and the rest have pleaded not guilty.
The investigation broke open in early June with early morning raids on a dozen rural Utah homes. Other defendants were arrested or surrendered in Colorado and New Mexico. Authorities have already seized truckloads of artifacts and are aggressively pursuing leads.
Vern and Marie Crites left their house Wednesday with the arrival of federal agents, Hall said. In a brief interview last week, Marie Crites told The Associated Press she had no comment – except to complain that during her arrest in June, she was thrown into jail in handcuffs and denied a bathroom visit.
Vern Crites described much of his collection in a series of secret recordings made by a FBI undercover operative throughout 2008. Characterized by other players as a major dealer and “price-setter,” Crites bragged of having sold pottery collections worth $500,000 a set, according to search warrant affidavits obtained by the AP.
Crites traded $4,800 of artifacts with the undercover operative Aug. 27, 2008, the documents say.
His most precious items, however, were not for sale.
The papers say Crites carefully guarded a collection of sacred Pueblo prayer sticks, telling the informant he could not reveal how he obtained them and wouldn’t sell any for fear they could be traced back to him.
Utah state archaeologist Kevin Jones said Pueblo prayer sticks “are just simply not available for sale or to outsiders. It would be like taking the chalice out of a Catholic church,” Jones said. “They’re anointed, sacred objects still in use for ceremonies.”
Crites also revealed to the government informant that in a 1986 raid, federal agents took 32 of his pots but overlooked a hidden safe and the most damning evidence – a ledger of a lifetime of trading that named people he dealt with. He also was recorded saying the safe contained a mummified eagle.
At another point, the informant said he watched Crites dig up an ancient burial site, kicking out a skull on the third shovelful. Spooked, Crites and another man covered up the remains without trying to recover any artifacts.
“Wish that fella had still been intact – the skeleton, I mean,” Crites was recorded saying at a site in San Juan County, Utah.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
