The Medici Conspiracy: Free The Medici Polaroids?

In Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini’s The Medici Conspiracy, it’s fascinating just how much evidence the Carabinieri, and particularly Paoli Ferri the prosecutor, were able to gather against Giacomo Medici and the other looters of Italian archaeological artefacts. I would have thought that those involved in criminal conspiracies would know better than to keep records, but Medici in particular seems to have been almost compulsive in the amount of information he preserved – including photographs of looted items he handled. The photos ran in series with the object shown often first covered in soil, then part restored, then fully restored, and sometimes even in the museum they eventually ended up in.

These now raise another issue. Should the Polaroids of looted antiquities, seized from Medici’s Free Port warehouse in 1995, and from his Italian villa now be made available to the ‘public’?

At the moment it seems that outside law enforcement agencies, access to the images in not possible for most people. I’ve heard that the Art Loss Register have some images, but are unable to share them – in any case, you have to pay a fee and them ask the ALR to search for items which seems cumbersome, particularly given their ‘experts’ are not archaeologists. The Interpol database is available only to those whose access they approve.

David Gill seems to be the only other person with copies of them – and he uses these to illustrate items he thinks were looted by or via Medici on his blog Looting Matters. In June he helped identify three items in a Christie’s sale catalogue as being shown amongst the Medici Polaroids: Three auction items vexes Christie’s. (WSJ). This summer more Medici vases were located in a museum in Madrid (Art Newspaper). Earlier in the year there was a sculpture in a Bonhams sale which turned up amongst the Medici Polaroids.

We’re now some 15 years on, and many items that Medici sold and which one can prove were looted from Italy, have still not been located – let alone returned to Italy.

Gill has been working for a long time to prevent looting, and done much valuable research in the field. Given his involvement with law enforcement and the fact that he seems to have been a major source of information to the authors of The Medici Conspiracy, it’s not surprising that he’s the one that ended up with the Polaroids; he’s willing to put in the hours of hard slog to go through them and compare them to items coming up on the art market and in museums.

But is one man, even with the help of research assistants, enough?

When those who are pro-collecting ask for them to be made available, a handful of anti-collecting fanatics seem to make accusations along the lines of  “you only want to see them so you can conceal your looted stuff”. Then we have pro-collecting fanatics who are accusing those that are anti-collecting of playing (in the words of Sarah Palin) “gotcha” with the ‘reputable’ art market by, for example, embarrassing Christie’s by revealing the Polaroids only after the lots had been accepted and the catalogue printed.

I believe Christie’s should have been given the chance to find out if the antiquities were looted before they accepted them, and to do the right thing, but I find it more extraordinary that they refused to withdraw the three lots as soon as it was pointed out that they were looted: Three auction items vexes Christie’s.  The lots of course were eventually withdrawn – and even had they not been, I assume no-one would have been stupid enough to bid on them – but withdrawn far too slowly.

A pair of earrings was recently returned to Iraq; it had been for sale at Christie’s, where Donny George spotted it in a catalogue. Although the jewellery went back, Christie’s is still refusing to admit who consigned the lot. I think that auction houses (and museums) should be forced to reveal the sellers of dodgy items, and that those who sell and/or consign looted or stolen lots should automatically be named and shamed.

This insistence of client ‘confidentiality’ implies that Christie’s do not want to make a good faith effort to help prevent looting and only sell kosher antiquities. It also makes me wonder … If the three lots in the Medici Polaroids had been brought to Christie’s, and Christie’s had been able to identify them – and so not sell them or list them in a catalogue – would they have turned the items over to the Italian authorities or returned them their so-called ‘owners’ (i.e. the people who tried to consign the items). Given some other dealings I’ve had with Christie’s over items they knew had been smuggled out of Italy … actually, I don’t think that they would have done the right thing. And what I find the most shocking about The Medici Conspiracy is how many curators at major US museums bought items that they knew were looted – Marion True writing to Medici to ask where items come from (i.e. where they were looted from) is extremely disturbing (two of her former colleagues at the Getty have expressed similar dismay to me about her actions).

Watson and Todeschini also draw attention to the fact that Hecht was provided with information about Conforti’s efforts to prevent looting by the Met and Berlin Museum.

It’s a dilemma. I’ve seen pieces over the years that I suspected were dodgy (but suspicion and proof are very different things). I also know what’s in a few private collections, and various museums, as do many of my colleagues; and we want to help get looted archaeological material returned to it’s country of origin. I suspect that if other people like us helped, we could much more quickly identify the current locations of most of the Medici loot – but we can’t do it if we don’t know what’s in the photos (i.e. looted).

Making databases available online of items looted from Baghdad Museum worked to some extent. The problem is that there are so many different places to look where stolen material is posted – Interpol, ICOMOS, the FBI, etc. Several groups of museums, archaeologists and even collectors have discussed setting up something less unwieldy. And as a good tandem step US museums are no longer hiding potentially ‘hot’ or dubiously provenanced antiquities; instead members of the AAMD are posting photographs and details of newly acquired antiquities (and Nazi-era assets here)

I’d like to see one central database created with images of archaeological material stolen from Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and so forth, along with the many different sets of Polaroids confiscated from various smugglers (Gill seems to regularly produce Gianfranco Becchina as well as Medici’s). And when material is stolen from Museums or archaeological sites, it could be added to the database. If there were such a database available, it would make it easier for us all to keep an eye out for looted material – and very hard for dishonest people to claim ‘good faith’ possession of loot.

One other issue to do with these recently uncovered Mobs of looters concerns me – and the looters are Mafia. We still seem to be using 1970 and the UNESCO Convention as the cut-off date (or the AIA’s 1973 decision in the US). Since Becchina, Medici and Robert Hecht we all working in the 1960s, it seems to me that we need to make an exception for these looted items and go back further. Since we are allowing claims from Jews who lost art in the Holocaust to go back well before 1970, it seems that we should go back to the Second World War in this case too. If we can show an item Hecht sold in the 1950s was looted, then it should be returned to it’s country of origin.

 

In The Medici Conspiracy (pp. 165-6), Bob Hecht boasted in his ‘Memoirs’ about George Zakos smuggling these two silver cups, one of which depicts Iphigenia,  out of Turkey, and then selling them to Dennis Haynes and the British Museum for $90,000. The BM’s web site here gives their number as GR 1960.2-1.1;GR 1960.2-1.3, indicating they entered the BM in 1960 (Hecht seems to have sold them three cups, though two are on the web site). As a provenance the Museum helpfully adds “Said to be from Turkey” … The smuggler has already admitted that the pieces are indeed from Turkey, and were removed illegally. If one follows the 1970 date, they need not be returned; if one followed my suggestion, they would go back to Turkey.

Illicit Cultural Property, Derek Fincham’s blog, has more info about the Medici Polaroids here.

As does David Gill’s Looting Matters here.

The Medici Conspiracy: Exekias and Greek Trade

Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini in The Medici Conspiracy lay out the evidence that the Italians were able to gather against Giacomo Medici, and a few other dealers. They’ve shown beyond reasonable doubt, in my opinion, that the items were dug up by tombolari in illicit ‘excavations’ and then smuggled out of the country and into Switzerland. The book is brilliant – I disagree with a few points here and there, but every once in a while a book comes along that changes the world, and I believe that The Medici Conspiracy is such a book: it will change archaeology and antiquities collecting. (I’ve read the 2006 Hardcover edition).

In the last twenty years, and particularly in the last ten years, opinions about collecting antiquities, particularly those without provenances, have shifted considerably. It’s easy to condemn today something done in the past, when knowledge and standards were different.

Having read the book it’s blaringly obvious that the artefacts various dealers sold, but which originated with Medici, were looted from Italy. Is this just hindsight, or should it have been obvious at the time?

Provenances do get lost, there are far more old collections of antiquities than people realise, often poorly or not catalogued … and the provenance of Greek vases is not quite as ‘obvious’ as the authors make it sound. Hindsight is always 20/20 …

On p. 61, repeated almost word for word on p. 343, Watson and Todeschini state the following:

“As Bartoloni and her colleagues point out, J.D. Beazley, in his 1956 publication, Attic Black-Figure Vase Painters – still today a reference book for black-figure ceramics – identified sixteen vases by Exekias for which the provenance was known and another six for which the provenance was not known. According to Beazley, thirteen of the vases whose provenance was known came from Etruria – five from Vulci, five from Orvieto, one each from other places in Italy – whereas only three came from other countries (two from Athens, one from France). In the case of Euphronios … vases of known provenance, nine came from Etruria (two from Cerveteri, two from Vulci, one each from other places), three from Greece, and one from Olbia on the Black Sea”

It’s been a while since I studied Greek vases, but there are some serious issues with these claims. Five or six vases linked to Euphronios as potter or painter clearly recently came out of Italy, as shown my the Medici Polaroids. With Exekias it’s a completely different story.

If this is indeed the information that the Italian archaeologists gave Watson and Todeschini, I’m slightly concerned – and since their research elsewhere is so thorough, why didn’t they check these claims. I don’t know if “Bartoloni and her colleagues” simply didn’t bother to keep up with research on Greek vases – because a heck of a lot has changed since 1956 – or if they were deliberately putting a pro-Italian spin on the information. Whatever the reason, they are wrong.

Elsewhere, when it comes to Greek vases, the authors seem to be following some sort of Italian nationalistic propaganda (throughout the book, but particularly pp. 341-343). The claims on p. 341:

“As the three experts make clear, the Greek colonies of southern Italy and Sicily, together with Etruscan cities, were primary commercial destinations for vases made in Greece … Etruria was obviously a special area for some reason, because only in Etruria “have objects of exceptional quality been found.” Scholars believe that these exceptional objects were sent as examples, as “commercial propaganda,” … to encourage international trade.”

Yes, many amazing Greek vases have been found in Italy, but they were made in Greece, and have also been found there too. The museums in Athens have fabulous collections of Greek vases too. The Athenian trade with Etruria consisted mostly of vases – they don’t seem to have used these vases to encourage anything else, nor was Etrurian trade considered more important than, for example, trade with Cyrene.

Ann Steiner, in a BMCR review of a collection of vases in Munich, with old Vulci provenances, states the case quite clearly against ‘special’ production only for the Etruscans:

“the majority of the vases included in the volume have a secure provenience, Vulci. It is therefore interesting to consider whether this group of vases supports the hypothesis that Athenian painters saw the export market as their first audience, and created both shapes and subjects to suit Etruscan requirements. The CVA subject-index lists more than 50 topics, excluding the Panathenaic prizes. All but two or three of these topics are also listed in Agora XXIII, the publication of the majority of the black-figure pottery excavated from that site. Likewise, the CVA index lists 22 different workshops or painters identified by Beazley, of which 17 are likewise represented at the Agora. This small sample suggests that the pottery used in Athens is very similar to that used at Vulci and undermines the idea that the Etruscan market demanded special and different products.”

In short, the Athenian vases exported to Vulci are quite similar to the ones found in the Athenian Agora – they were not vases designed specially for the Etruscan market. There are a few examples, such as Nolane vases, which are almost all found in Italy, but the Athenians do not seem to have been creating their pottery production with the Etruscan market in mind.

This becomes clear when we look again at the distribution of works by Exekias with provenances, and include the many works identified since Beazley published his seminal study in 1956 – and which the Italian experts for some reason chose to ignore.

[The ‘trademarks’ on vases were added in Athens at the time of production (Arafat and Morgan p. 109, citing the same 1979 study by Alan Johnston) – so it means that they were intended for a specific market, but there is always the possibility that the item didn’t end up there.

In the 18th century there began a craze for ‘Etruscan’ vases (most of which of course later turned out to be Greek), and excavations began throughout Italy to find them. The Etruscan buried their vases in tombs, hence their better condition. Excavations did not start in Greece and Turkey until later, and only in recent decades have they become as numerous as those in Italy – the Italian countryside has been more thoroughly excavated than the Greek one, and that is one reason we have so many more vases from Italy than Greece. I should also point out that many of the early excavations – from example those that provided the vases for Sir William Hamilton’s collections – were no more professional than those of the tombolari, and the ‘provenances’ they provided no more useful. I would not wish this to be taken as an endorsement of the tombolari; I am simple making the point that standards in archaeology have changed dramatically over the centuries.

The ‘French’ Exekias is a fragmentary amphora originally depicting Apollo, Artemis, a deer, and Leto. The fragment now in Narbonne Museum, France, was found a few kilometres outside the town at Montlaurès; initially it seems to have been the more important town, but by the Roman period Narbonne was pre-eminent. The fragment by Exekias shows that extensive trade was going on at the time, probably directly with Greece rather than through Italy, if we compare the example of Massalia (Marseilles). It seems to have been known as Helyce palus in Antiquity (Avienus), and had an active port nearby (it’s 15 km inland but on the Aude river) based on the rich archaeological finds, including a lot of Iberian pottery and large numbers of sherds of both Italian and Attic vases from the 6th century BC onwards. The Narbonne Exekias is illustrated in the Beazley Archive Database here (along with a number of his other vases, one of which is listed as ‘lost’).

We tend to concentrate on Attic vases found in Etruria, because that is where they have been excavated in good condition (due to their use as grave goods in chamber tombs), but the trade was widespread. An Euphronios was found at Olbia on the Black Sea. And the importance of Greek trade with France is well illustrated by the find made in 1953 in Vix in NE Burgundy. There archaeologists excavated the grave of a Gaulish princess, which included one of the best preserved (late) Archaic bronze pots we have, now known as the Vix Crater: it was made in Greece, or possibly Southern Italy. The Crater’s companions, silver drinking cups and a phiale came from Attica; a bronze Oinochoe is from Etruria. Amongst the 40,000-something pot sherds found in the surrounding area were Black Figure pieces from Attica, showing that pottery was also traded that far north. I think the BF Droop cup was also find in the grave, which included pearls (possibly from Bahrain) and a diadem that seems to be Scythian (a French schoolboy created a nice web site illustrating the finds here).  The points I’m trying to make is that even ‘barbarian’ inland France has evidence for quite extensive trade links, and that if these items were taken out of their archaeological context, then we would probably assume they had come from a grave in Etruria or Magna Graecia rather than Gaul.

Attic vases were also found at Conliege in the Jura. Further north, fragments of black figure vases have been found in Germany, for example at Heuneburg on the Danube (images of two here). Greek vases from the Archaic and Classical period were widely traded – and not just to Italy. These pots are believe to have travelled from Athens to Massalia, then up the Rhone and been traded from there to the Germans.

Watson and Todeschini mention the Narbonne Exekias, but they ignore many others that have been identified in the half-century since Beazley’s seminal work on Black Figure Vases and accepted by scholars of Greek vase painting. We also have to remember that the Iron Curtain did not fall until 1989, so many of those collections were hard to access at the time, and collections in countries such as Albania and Cuba are still not easy to see today.

Due to the wonders of the internet, I came across a map, which shows ‘The Distribution of the works by Exekias’ on Google Earth (here). As we can see, the finds are indeed concentrated in Etruria and Greece, as Watson and Todeschini state. But the map shows pots found around the Mediterranean that they ignore.

I think Watson and Todeschini possibly included the amphora fragments by Exekias found in Locri and now in Reggio Calabria Museum as amongst their Etrurian provenances  (? though Locri is in the toe of Italy). All the other Exekias vases and fragments from Italy were found in Etruria.

The vases in mainland Greece  mention are also shown on the map: one in Eretria, one from the sanctuary at Brauron, and the two from Athens, including a beautiful Kalyx Krater dedicated on the north slope of the Athenian Acropolis (showing Heracles being introduced to Olympia). I count four vases in mainland Greece, not Watson and Todeschini’s “two from Athens” – or seven Exekias works if one includes Samos.

A vase by Exekias was found in the Sanctuary of Demeter in Cyrene; the city was a Greek colony, and trade between Greece and Libya is well attested. The Cyrene Exekias, a vase by Kleitias, part of a Panathenaic amphora, and other pottery excavated from the sanctuary are illustrated in an article here.

Three vessels by Exekias were found in the Heraion of Samos, are now in the Vathy Museum; a fragment of a Kalyx Krater, fragments of at least one amphora, and fragments of a lid. Samos is part of Greece, but Watson and Todeschini seem to have been writing about the three Exekias works found in mainland Greece and excluded these.

In addition I can add three more works by Exekias and/or his studio which do not appear on this map:

Other fragments found in France are attributed to Exekias in his early years; they come from La Monédière in Bessan,  and were once an amphora with Athena and with Heracles fighting the Nemean Lion. Two of the fragments are in Boardman AJA 82.1, 1974, ill. 1 – where they are mislabelled as from Ensurune, see Jully here.

A fragment attributed to Exekias or his studio was found further west, down the coast from Montlaurès at Emporium, a city found like Marseilles by Phocean colonists from Turkey (c. 575 BC), and which became the largest Greek colony in Spain. It is particularly interesting as it has ‘Onetorides kalos’ written on it, and Onetorides is the only kalos-name associated with Exekias as a painter (he potted amphorae painted by others with the kalos-name Stesias).

Another Exekias was found at Ullastret in Catalonia (published in the Ullastret CVA). A whole book has been written about the commerce in ceramics to Languedoc and that part of the coast: Exekias may be the best artist found there, but his vases were not unique finds.

[I should be clear that one has to differentiate between Exekias as painter (and also potter, which I am writing about), and Exekias as potter, with the painting done by Group E.]

A later example will show just how difficult it can be to work out where antiquities come from. Archaeologists agree unanimously that the Sevso Hoard was looted, but not where it was looted from; almost everyone I know has a different argument for why Italy/Syria /Turkey /Lebanon/Libya / the former Yugoslavia/Hungary /France/ (insert country of your choice) is where it came from, and they all tend to give good reasons to support their choice. A Caeretan Hydria is almost certain to have been found in Caera (Cerveteri), and a Tarentine sculpture is particularly distinctive because of it’s stone – but more important works, which moved around in Antiquity, tend to be harder to assign provenances to.

We know not only that works by Exekias were made in Athens, but also the specific area of the city in which he worked (the Keramaikos). Despite this, it’s not possible to be as certain as Watson and Todeschini would like to make it sound to work out where an unprovenanced work by Exekias was found.

I don’t know of any finds from the Black Sea, but I think that I’ve demonstrated that works by Exekias were shipped all around the Mediterranean in the Archaic period. Although the majority of his work had an Italian provenance in the past, as more research is being undertaken, and more collections published, this is no longer the case. This is why although an Exekias without a provenance is likely to have come from Etruria, it could just as easily have come from anywhere else in the Ancient World.

The Medici Polaroids and supporting evidence prove that those items were looted from Italy, but without this, the case could have been made for numerous items having been dug up elsewhere. It’s not as obvious as it appears with hindsight that an Exekias must come from Italy …

Anyone interested in archaeology must read this book: Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini The Medici Conspiracy.

Roman sunbathing ...

Roman sunbathing � The Toynbee convector

I remember a passage from I Claudius where walnut juice was used as fake tan, but cannot find a source for it.

RIP Allianoi

OfficialWire: Turkish Dam Will Bury Ancient Roman City

Combat Trauma and the Classics

Dr. Jonathan Shay on Combat Trauma - New York Times

Also known as PTSD (I've been meaning to blog about ancient PTSD for a while), and in WWI called 'shell shock'. As part of therapy they are reading Greek and Roman epics by Homer and Virgil - all of which have to do with war ...

Women, War and ... Flies?

I only have this black and white photo from an old book, but ... these finds are interesting as: they relate to war, and they were found in the tomb of a woman.

Vicky Alvear Shecter blogged a while back about Gold Flies being awarded by the Egyptian as military medals (here). Yesterday we were messaging, and since her brilliant new book is about Cleopatra, I thought I'd point out that some of these flies, awarded to an earlier female queen, had been excavated.

The tomb belonged to Ahhotep I, who was either at the end of the 17th Dynasty / Intermediate Period, or right at the beginning of the 18th Dynasty (depending on how you assign you pharaohs - and this does vary!). She seems to have been a military woman, and been involved in pushing the Hyskos out of Egypt. As well as the flies, seen in the middle of the photo, she was also buried with daggers and an axe. The axe shows a pharaoh, her son Ahmose I, striking a Hyskos in its decoration. It's slightly ironic as we have the mummy of her husband Seqenenre Tao II, which has a large number of axe blows to his head which give us his cause of death (photo here).

Ahhotep spawned a whole host of women in the 18th Dynasty involved in warfare, the most famous of which was Hatshepsut. What makes Ahhotep I almost unique is that she was buried in a tomb with her war weapons. The armour of a high-ranking woman warrior was found in Tomb II at Vergina, but we're not sure who she is - if the tomb belonged to Philip II, she would have been one of his wives, but even that attribution has become dubious. I find these woman fascinating, and that's why my next book is about them  ...

Socks and Roman Sartorial Sins ....

An excavation on the site of the proposed extension of the A1 Motorway between Dishforth and Leeming in North Yorkshire, England, has unearthed the remains of a Roman military fort. As so often happens, the modern road follows an ancient one - the Roman Dere Street.

The finds are interesting, whether or not the fort has a link to the mysterious Ninth Legion as the Daily Mail claims (story, with good photos).

The headline that amused me the most though is the Telegraph's Romans wore socks with sandals, new British dig suggests

Yup, this sartorial sin was not restricted to modern Englishmen Abroad. The Romans wore socks with sandals. Shock, horror!

Actually, this is nothing new to us, and archaeologists have known about this horror for decades. We've puzzled over whether the carved feet on some statues showed boots or sandals and socks, and we've even found socks intact in excavations, with suspicious indents by the big toe suggesting that they were designed to accommodate the thong of a sandal ... I blogged the ones in my photo above recently.

So the tagline for these new articles is that this new excavation has found a bit of sandal with some fibers attached. The story is such big news that The Sun has even run an article on the excavation (here - love the 'reconstruction') - the first such story in the paper better known for photos of topless women that I know of.

Socks are not surprising in Britain, as for much of the year the weather is quite cold. There is even a letter preserved from the Vindolanda Fortress on Hadrian's Wall (Scotland is even colder than England), about socks. It is highly fragmentary, but TVII Tablet 346 concerns a gift of socks to the soldier from a certain Sattua (not the correspondent). Sandals are mentioned next, although there is no proof that the two need have been worn together.

With marble statues that have lost their paint, one can argue over whether the toe-less feet are carved to show socks or boots. One this copper Roman 'novelty' razor it's clear - the herringbone pattern is clearly intended to show wool (or cloth), and these are ... socks. And yes, it too was found in England (in the Tees River at Piercebridge in County Durham). It may only be 5 cm high, but it's pretty damning evidence.

Fortunately we English were not the only ones committing this sartorial sin. The Egyptians did it too. The red split-toe socks in my first photo were made circa AD 300, found at Oxyrhynchus, and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

A papyrus from Egypt, in the third year of the reign of Domitian (AD 81), record the pay and expenses of a soldier named Gaius Valerius Germanus - the text is discussed a bit by military historians, but 12 drachmas in the accounts is for boots and either socks or 'leggings' (as this edition uses). Germanus was, despite his name, from Tyre - and again, there is no suggestion that even if they were socks that they were intended to be worn with sandals (one wouldn't want to defame the long-dead man).

The truth is that it's hard to be sure when socks were worn with sandals and when they were worn with boots. But, like trousers (which I blogged about here), they became part of the Roman Legionary's uniform in the Imperial period.

The Temple Treasure in Medieval Rome

Champagne_dis.pdf (application/pdf Object)

I blogged quite a lot in the past around Sean Kingsley's book on the Temple Treasure - he argued that according to the sources it left Rome under the Vandals then made it's way to Constantinople under Belissarius.

This PhD dissertation by Marie Therese Champagne is interesting as it discussed the relationships between the Papacy and Jews in 12th century Rome, with much of it's focus on Vatican claims to have the Temple Treasure in the Lateran Basilica.

Hecatomnus Tomb: Video

HABER: Bakan G�nay Lahiti İnceledi haberi

Even if you can't read the Turkish text, it's worth watching this long video to see the tomb in detail. David Meadows is most impressed by how the looters got in - I am fascinated by the details of the paintings, and how much the deceased, believed to be Hecatomnus, looks like the so-called Mausolus statue from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus.

The Looting of Kuwaiti Museums

Some sort of a tempest in a tea cup is going on about Donny George's role in the Iraqi looting of Kuwait, and David Gill has even felt the need to issue a press release. I'm a little surprised that this has become an issue again.

I interviewed Donny George way back in 2006, and asked him about it; he told me, in front of a British Museum employee and on tape, his own account of his role in the Iraqi looting of Kuwaiti Museums.

It was old news at the time, and many of us were aware of the fact that Dr George had helped pack up the collections (museum and private) in Kuwait in 1990. It wasn't news to me. It wasn't news to the British Museum employee. And when I wrote up the related conference going on in London for Minerva Magazine, it wasn't news to the editor, who didn't think it was worth including in the summary (available online here).

Yes, Donny George was very much involved in the Iraqi looting of Kuwaiti cultural property. No, Dr George's life is not whiter than white, but then again whose is? He's been working in the real world rather than an Ivory Tower, and so he has had to get his hands dirty over the years. Oh, and let's not forget that Saddam Hussein was in charge of Iraq at the time - so Dr George wouldn't really have been able to say 'no' ... Obviously I wish that the contents of the private collections had been as scrupulously returned as those of the Museum, but it was not to be. The man is not perfect, but he was just obeying orders, and sometimes that's the only option people feel they have.

Hecatomnus Tomb III

I forgot to add earlier that the walls inside the tomb were painted. As is clear from the photos, these were in terrible condition, but funerary dancing girls have been identified. I'm surprised, if the tomb was unlooted until recently, that there were not more visible traces of paint on the sarcophagus.

The keystone vault is however proving to be contentious, with some scholars questioning it's use there at such an early date in Carian architecture. The problem would then arise of trying to find a Hellenistic local ruler who was buried there. Satraps and local Dynasts continued to rule in Caria after Alexander; no 'major' ruler died there, but many Hellenistic rich private citizens erected some quite elaborate tombs, to the point where Demtrius of Phaleron felt compelled to ban them in Athens around 307 BC (a good example of such a tomb is on display in Piraeus Museum, and imitates the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus on a smaller scale).

I'd have no problem with an early fourth century date. We know that the Hecatomnids within at most a decade were hiring the leading sculptors in the Greek world, with innovations such as press-folds and piecing seen on the sculptures of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. Given what we know of Carian architecture and arts of the time - many people forget that Cnidus was in Caria, for example - a little innovation does not strike me as unlikely.

'Hecatomnus' Tomb Update

This seems to only be getting coverage in the Turkish press, but a few people were kind enough to send me links to stories and information.

To start with, I was incorrect in my first version in saying that the tomb was securely linked to Hecatomnus by an inscription, as one account stated. Apparently the tomb had been looted, and there were no inscriptions.

Hecatomnus was appointed Satrap of Caria, and had the distinction of being the first non-Persian appointed to this office. He was a native Carian whose family can possibly be traced back to circa 500 BC, and whose ancestors sometime in the 5th century seem to have become priest-kings of Zeus Carius at Mylasa, the pan-Carian cult centre.

The sarcophagus in a tomb chamber was found some 12 m down, under the site believed to have been the location of the temple of Zeus at Mylasa (modern Milas). Scholars also believe that this was the location of the 'royal' palace of the Dynasty. When I saw a detail of the reclining bearded figure carved on the sarcophagus, I first thought they had used a photograph of a marble panel from Iasos to illustrate the story; they are both linked to the Hecatomnid Dynasty, and both produced in that Archaising style the Dynasty favoured.

Though the tomb and the sarcophagus had been looted. This is clear as the lid of the sarcophagus was smashed by the tomb robbers - which is a pity as bones would have provided us with fascinating insight into the man - but it is still a remarkable find, and one of the most exciting of recent decades. The sarcophagus depicts the deceased reclining in state in the centre of the long 'front', and depicts different scenes on the other sides; the short ends are carved with mourning women not unlike the Mourning Women Sarcophagus (from Sidon, now in Istanbul). Statues of mourning Heliades between the columns on the interior of the Belevi Tomb are now lost, but attested there by an inscription; and my reconstruction of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus would include a row of mourning women around the high base.

It's an important person's tomb, and dates from the first half of the 4th century BC. It can't be Mausolus since numerous sources attest clearly that he was buried in his own eponymous Mausoleum in Halicarnassus, but it must presumably be an earlier Hecatomnid since they were in power in Milas at the time.

I don't know what the evidence for the c. 390 BC date of the tomb is, but if we're to place it then, I would suggest that Hecatomnus' father Hyssaldomus - the priest-king of the Carians, although probably not Satrap of Caria - must also be considered as a probable occupant. If the dating is purely stylistic, then the sarcophagus could be from the 370s BC and more likely to have contained Hecatomnus himself. The portrait on the deceased, like the Mausoleum portrait of Mausolus, is not overly idealised, and an attempt at portraiture.

The tomb, since it was beneath the temple, pre-dated it; the columns of the current temple look Hadrianic to me (more were in the garden of the local museum, under a bush last time I visited). The temple is identified as one of Zeus by an inscription, although this is probably one of the three temples of Zeus in the city rather than the temple of Zeus Carius (which is believed to have been on a ridge on the edge of the city).

The woman seated to the right of the reclining Hecatomnus would be his wife (whose name is not known). She is wearing a tiara, which confirms that she is royal, so almost certainly a Hecatomnid.

The bearded man standing on the left end would be Mausolus the heir.

The two youths would be his younger sons, and the veiled woman at the right one of his mourning daughters; since she is the counterpart to Mausolus, she was presumably his sister-wife Artemisia.

We know that Hecatomnus had two daughters - Artemisia II and Ada - but the two smaller children depicted on the front seem to be boys. This is interesting, as it would suggest Ada is one of the mourning women on the side of the sarcophagus, and that there were two more sons who either died in childhood or were not deemed worthy to be recorded by history.

The back of the sarcophagus seems to have shown Hecatomnus hunting or fighting, with one arm raised holding an inserted (and now looted) bronze spear. This recalls the slightly later Alexander Sarcophagus (also from Sidon and now in Istanbul).

We'll that's my quick analysis based on the photos. On a personal note, if I ever come across the people who looted this tomb, I will string them up and torture them.

For more photos, see my original post here.

Hecatomnus' Tomb Found in Mylasa

Police in Turkey swooped on a site that was being 'excavated' by looters last week, and made an amazing discovery - a tomb believed, because of its' inscription, to have held Hecatomnus, the eponymous founder of the Hecatomnid Dynasty, and father of Mausolus.

The published English text of the story is a joke (see here), and frankly I found the Turkish version more intelligeable even though I don't speak Turkish ...:  
AKREOLOJİ DÜNYASININ VE DEVLETİN GÖZÜ UZUNYUVA’DA
Kaçak kazıdan yüzyılın arkeolojik buluşu çıktı (with this amazing photo gallery).

 
Luckily for you, dear readers, I've studied Hecatomnid archaeology in some depth, and I had a copy of Simon Hornblower's wonderful Mausolus (Oxford 1981) to hand. So this is what I have been able to work out ....

Looters have been digging a site adjacent to the temple of Zeus Carius at Mylasa (modern Milas); until Mausolus moved it to Halicarnassus, this city was the capital of Caria, seat of the hereditary king-priests and the location of it's most important cult, that of Zeus Carius.

Last week the police got wind of this, moved in and brought archaeologists with them. These found a tunnel that led to a chamber tomb which in turn held an elaborately carved sarcophagus. An inscription linked it to Hecatomnus, who reigned from sometime before 391 to 377 BC.

I'm a little confused by the measurements. I think the 30 m length must refer to the tunnel? And the 2.75 by 1.85 to the sarcophagus, which sits quite tightly in the chamber.

UltraOrthodox Women and the Burqa

http://m.jezebel.com/5602542/the-burqa-banfor-orthodox-jewish-women

Apparently some had been taking the rules about modesty to the extreme of wearing a Burqa - but are about to be forbidden from doing so by the rabbis.