Growing attention to the questionable acquisitions practices of the Hobby Lobby and the Green family for the creation of the Museum of the Bible highlights both the scale of the problem and the degree to which current polices fail to prevent such activities. In spite of advice from Patty Gerstenblith, an expert on cultural property law, in 2010 the Hobby Lobby purchased over five thousand ancient Iraqi artefacts of suspect provenance and shipped them under false or misleading labels to obscure their country of origin and content. Questions about the Hobby Lobby and the Green Scholars Initiative have been raised by papyrologists for some time now (see the work of Roberta Mazza among others), following the announcement of the publication of a new Sappho fragment in 2014. Whilst dubious private collections are by no means a novel feature of the academic landscape, questions about the ethics of engaging with such collections are becoming more prominent. The role of academics and institutions in the implicit laundering of artefacts through authentification and publication is increasingly coming under greater scrutiny. Such a rapidly shifting ethical landscape runs the risk of stranding people on the wrong side of the divide, especially those whose disadvantaged position in the academy (the great itinerant insecure workforce shimmering under the sandstone establishment) incentivises publication and funding at any risk.

In Australia with increased cuts to the government funding of higher education, many universities are encouraging researchers to seek a greater proportion of their funding from private donors, industry and philanthropic organisations. The proven ability of researchers (and / or departments) to attract external funding has become the central performance indicator for jobs, promotions and further funding support. But what does this do to the ethical landscape of our universities?

The influence of industry over the shape and endurance of research programs in the sciences has been obvious enough. Less attention however has been devoted to the impact of private money on humanities research. Politically motivated research is not new, but its current manifestation in the research landscape may be less obvious than classic examples of imperially sponsored history. Private funding without oversight can influence everything from the areas studied, the research funded, the courses offered and the questions asked. The destruction of mummy masks by scholars and students within the orbit of the Green’s enterprise in order to recover the improbable Christian papyri they sought  (as Mazza and others have noted, no Christian papyri have been found in such a context) represents one case in which ideology determined which aspect of the past was worthy of survival.

Now, any archaeological or interpretative consideration of antiquity involves a choice of focus. The latter engagement is less likely to involve a choice with catastrophic consequences for any focus which isn’t selected. Archaeology too, when done responsibly, *should* aim to preserve as much as possible and ground any unavoidable destruction in exhaustive and rigorous reasoning. *Should*.  The destruction of the Coptic monastic remains in 1902 at the site of Deir el-Bahri by Naville on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Fund in order to recover Hatshepsut’s temple (as a major tourist attraction) is a key example of what can happen.

The manipulation of the past is much more apparent when it comes in material form. However, we should be just as concerned, if not more so, with the largely invisible manipulations caused by the subordination of institutions to private interests. For researchers this means asking difficult questions about where the available funding we are applying for comes from and whether it comes with strings attached. It involves asking whether we are endorsing particular organisations and activities by accepting such funding. It pushes us to think about how complicit we are in legitimising particular groups. It means, above all, thinking about the best way to create transparent relationships with external partners which protect our research integrity.

This means thinking a little bit more about what research and teaching integrity looks like for a particular department and a particular researcher. What does it mean to develop a teaching and research program organically and in response to the needs of the field and to the needs of the broader community (rather than the needs of the budget and cashed-up specialist interest groups within that community)?

Increasingly universities are being asked to demonstrate their relevance and significance to the broader community and universities are using their record of external funding to answer that question. However, private and industry funders do not a broad Australian public make.

Private funding should not and will never be eliminated from universities. The peculiarity of popular politics in the last few decades would seem to point to the value of having sources of funding available outside those determined by the government of the day. Many donors, industry partners, and philanthropic organisations engage with universities for the best possible reasons and in pursuit of exactly the sorts of goals researchers would applaud. Things go wrong, however, when the purpose and value of the university as an independent institution gets forgotten or co-opted in the politics of laundering someone else’s agenda. Academics have a responsibility in all this; in formulating, understanding, and protecting what is unique about the institution in its most ideal form.

Rachel

August 14, 2:00–4:00 pm, AHH 5.212: ‘Faking the News’ with Dr Colin Klein (Philosophy) and Dr Margie Borschke (MMCCS)

September 5, 4:00–6:00 pm, AHH 5.212: ‘The Authentic Terrorist?: Mobilising the Past, Battling for the Future’ with Dr Julian Droogan (SSC)

October 13–14, X5B 321: ‘IMAGINING THE REAL: ALTERNATIVE (ARTE)FACTS FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT DAY’, a two day symposium with keynote lecture by Prof. John Melville Jones

October 26, 4:00–6:00 pm, AHH 5.212: ‘Creative Authenticity: Originality and the Real’ with Dr. Mio Bryce (INTS) and Dr Ilona Hongisto (MMCCS)

November 2, 6:00–9:00 pm, TBA: ‘Authenticity of Experience: History and Gaming’ with Dr Rowan Tulloch (MMCCS), Daniel Keogh (Educational Games Designer, 3P Learning), and Abbie Hartman (MHPIR)

November 9, 4:00–6:00 pm, AHH Lvl 5, Board Room: ‘Authenticity of Desire’ with Dr Thomas Baudinette (INTS), Dr Karin Sellberg (Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, UQ) and Dr Chelsea Barnett (Modern History)

Our first seminar for the second semester of Markers of Authenticity will take place this Monday, the 14th of August, from 2–4pm in our new premises in the Australian Hearing Hub, Level 5, Seminar Room 212. 

This week Dr Colin Klein (Philosophy) and Dr Margie Borschke (MMCCS) will be talking to us about the phenomenon of Fake News. 

Is fake news real? Is it a meaningful category? What does it mean to ‘fake’ the news? Is it a problem of consumption or production? Now that ‘fake news’ is ‘old news’, what can we learn from this transformation of our media discourse about the tangling of reason and belief in our everyday experience of the world? This workshop examines these issues from media and cognitive perspectives, revisiting questions about authenticity, truth, rhetoric, belief and objectivity in academia and the world.

For the first half of 2017, Vanessa Mawby participated in the ‘Forging Antiquity’ Project as an undergraduate intern within Macquarie University’s PACE Program. Below she reflects on her experience during the internship.

This semester I was given the opportunity to work as a project intern on the ARC Discovery Project, ‘Forging Antiquity: Authenticity, forgery and fake papyri’, through the Macquarie University PACE program, with A/Prof. Malcolm Choat, and Dr. Rachel Yuen-Collingridge. Primarily, I was tasked with creating an index of the ‘Recueil d’anciennes écritures’, a 16^th century manuscript by Pierre Hamon, and reuniting the copies he made with original manuscripts and artefacts. The process was a little grueling but rewarding nonetheless, and honestly, it felt like detective work.

On opening the manuscript you are immediately bombarded with all sorts of crazy scripts and alphabets. Hamon labels some as ‘Latin’, but they looked so foreign, I had to take his word for it. Another immediate hurdle was learning to read Hamon’s own challenging cursive script, in which his difficult 16^th century French was written. But as the weeks rolled by, Hamon and I developed a working relationship where I was becoming accustomed to his way of writing, and slowly deciphering the alphabets. I’m not exaggerating when I say that with every alphabet/deciphered, there’d be actual whoops of joy in the office.

The next big step was locating the manuscripts from which Hamon had copied the alphabets and sample texts appearing in his own collection. We knew a lot of them were likely to be held now by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France archives, but I’m going to be honest; trawling through the thousands of manuscripts and other artefacts in the archive, and painstakingly comparing them to Hamon’s work seemed a task too large to even approach. Luckily for me, I was equipped with an article by H. Omont, which gave a partial guide to which artefacts Hamon was copying, and in some cases, even a BnF archive number.

After numerous twists and turns leading to dead ends, medieval runes, and even Roman inscriptions, the index was mostly complete and it was time to turn to translating a Latin work by Bartholemew Germon, an 18^th century Jesuit scholar, who discussed the authenticity of an extract of the charta plenariae securitatis which appears in Hamon’s manuscript. After weeks of dealing with Hamon’s fascinating and strange manuscript, it was almost a relief to be reading Latin, albeit 18^th century Latin.

To complete my semester as a project intern, I presented a short paper alongside my supervisors at a Markers of Authenticity seminar hosted at Macquarie University. I’d never presented before, let alone with a team, so it was a nerve-racking experience to say the least. But I found that presenting as a team provided a safety net for me, and the successful presentation showcased our collaborative work.

If this internship has taught me anything about forgers and the relationship between disciplinary practice, it’s that there’s so much more to the ‘forger’ and their ‘forgeries’ than can be immediately assumed. Instead of generating new texts from scratch, as I had previously supposed, the ‘forgeries’ in Hamon’s manuscript display his method of excerpting texts and stitching pieces together to create new texts, which are only minutely different from their authentic counterparts. This discovery broadened my understanding of the many ways in which forgeries can be made.

Next semester, although completing my PACE activity, I will be staying on the project as a research assistant for the next phase of the project on Constantine Simonides. It’s sad to be saying good-bye to Hamon, but I don’t think any of us will yet be able to say, ‘case closed’.

Vanessa Mawby

Dear all;

The interdisciplinary seminar series “Markers of Authenticity” continues in session 1 2017 with the program of events listed below. Please join us for these seminars, for which we will send out reminders and abstracts closer to their respective dates.

Our interdisciplinary seminar series continues in semester 2 and we have a dynamic program on offer designed to extend the discussions we have shared so far in Markers of Authenticity.

Have a look at the upcoming series and come join us for an afternoon of interdisciplinary conversation and refreshments. Also, if you are interested in attending the workshop on ‘Scripture, Reception, and Authenticity,’ held on the 9th of September, please get in contact with us.

All are welcome! We look forward to seeing you and hearing your thoughts once more!

The great team at the Antiquities Coalition have just released this helpful infographic, designed to guide casual buyers of cultural heritage (and perhaps the not-so-casual) into making ethical, responsible purchasing decisions.

Education is one of our greatest resources in the battle against antiquities looting and trafficking, so make sure to consult this checklist and the other informative tools provided by the AC!

– Lauren & Rachel

This post is not about the authenticity of the Gospel of Jesus Wife: it’s been fairly clear for some time, even leaving aside the multiple issues that have been raised about the GJW itself (especially, though not only, through Andrew Bernhard’s tireless efforts), that the accompanying Gospel of John fragment has multiple contraindications of authenticity; given that they appear to be in the same handwriting, it is extremely difficult (if not impossible) to construct a narrative in which the GJW is not also a modern forgery.

Rather, this post is about some the implications of the entire ‘Gospel of Jesus Wife affair’ which have become apparent since the public revelation that Walter Fritz was the owner of these papyri in the splendid piece by Ariel Sabar in the Atlantic.

Acquisition History, Provenance, and Ownership

This is something which Roberta Mazza has long been stressing, and which Carrie Schroeder highlighted immediately in the wake of the Atlantic article. This is a key lesson, but it’s important not to apply it only to papyri of disputed authenticity, but also to all papyri that do not have a clear archaeological provenance, especially those acquired after 1972 (the date of entry into force of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property). There must be as full as possible transparency about how, and from where, papyri (and related textual artefacts) were acquired.

In her publication of the GJW in the Harvard Theological Review, Karen King provided far more information than most editors of papyri ever do: at most, editors have in the past usually only mentioned basic data, such as the date at which a papyrus entered the collection, and perhaps the dealer from whom it came. More frequently they have said nothing whatsoever about the artefact’s acquisition history. They have not usually included the text of relevant correspondence, or the descriptions of sale contracts; they certainly have not made such documents themselves available for public scrutiny. It is only in cases where the authenticity of a papyrus has been questioned, such as with the Artemidorus papyrus (which most scholars now think is genuine) that such details have been made available. In the case of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, there was consistent pressure for Karen King to release the scans of the accompanying documentation provided by Walter Fritz to authenticate the collection history of the Gospel of Jesus Wife: once they were available for checking, Ariel Sabar was able to show that, – as suspected by Christian Askeland and others – they actually raised further problems, as at least one of these documents appeared to be itself forged.

So, the lesson should be that all such material that establishes or speaks to provenance or acquisition history should be both detailed in editions, and made publicly available: maximum transparency is required. Yet not everyone is following this. The Museum of the Bible, for instance (which houses the ‘Green collection’ of textual artefacts), has consistently refused to release such documentation, claiming they are commercial-in-confidence, and that doing so would to damage their relationship with their sources. They are saying, in effect, “Trust us”: but many do not, and many will continue to not extend this trust while such information is not released. The Museum of the Bible is not alone in citing such considerations: The British Library once refused to show me an expenditures register that was over 100 years old, which showed not only the dates of acquisition (which are available in other registers on open shelves) but also the names and/or details of the sources of the papyri in it: this was withheld, I was told, because the Library does not say  how much it paid for items or to whom. Some collecting institutions now either make this information available, or provide it readily when asked: this should become standard practice.

Considerable criticism was leveled at Karen King for declining to identify the owner of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife: yet when Geoffrey Smith presented an unpublished papyrus of the Gospel of John at the 2015 SBL Annual meeting, while rightly presenting images of the documentation which established the collection history of the papyrus, he also granted the owner anonymity, as did Dirk Obbink to the owner of the Sappho papyrus he published in 2014. Either granting an owner anonymity is OK, or it isn’t: it’s not only OK when it suits someone to argue it is, and not in other cases.

Ideally, there would be no anonymous collectors: if a collector wishes to have a papyrus published, then s/he should be prepared to be identified as its owner. Ideally too, there should be full transparency of acquisition history, with all the relevant documents available to anyone who wishes to check them. If anyone wants to collect papyri, they should be prepared to say how they acquired them, and allow people to check supporting documentation. Commercial considerations cannot be an excuse for obfuscating or refusing to release such material. And crucially, these considerations relate to all papyri, not just those of disputed authenticity, and all collections, not just private collections.

Disputed provenance does not = forgery

While problems with provenance documentation are a strong indicator that something is amiss, such does not automatically indicate that the item itself is a forgery. Papyrology contains many cases in which the acquisition history of a papyrus, or even of a bigger assemblage, is unclear, where multiple versions of the story exist, or where it is suspected that the story offered is not the full or even real story. The Chester Beatty, the Manichaean papyri said to be from Medinet Madi, the ‘Dishna papers’ mostly in the Bibliotheque Bodmer, and the Nag Hammadi library, all have provenance stories which are unclear, disputed, or in some cases probably or demonstrably invented. Provenance stories were routinely fabricated by dealers, looters, or middle-men to protect their source, and forgery of provenance is increasingly common – much more common, perhaps, than forgery of antiquities itself. What it usually indicates is that the item is not in accordance in some way with the 1970 UNESCO Convention. This does not mean such information should not be investigated, or that it is not important: just that it does not automatically mean that the artefact the document describes is a forgery, still less that the authenticity of every item in the collection is thereby under suspicion: nearly every papyrus collection contains forgeries.

Further Research

While the unmasking of the fragment’s owner has been widely heralded as the ‘end of the story’, it is also just the start of several much more interesting stories. Roberta Mazza’s work on provenance and the trade in papyri has been touched on above; Carrie Schroeder has discussed what the affair means for biblical studies and related fields in a forthcoming treatment (which she has kindly allowed me to read[update: now available here]) in a volume from the 2015 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium also featuring reflections by Mark Goodacre, James McGrath, and Janet Spittler, which promises to be an important contribution to the debate. Liv Ingeborg Lied has already offered valuable reflections on how online discussion affects the way these debates play out, both online, and at a recent conference at the University of Agder in Kristiansand which I had the pleasure of attending. There are many other examples of such self-reflexive research in press and online, and most of it is very valuable.

Along with these necessary discussions about the implications of this affair for the future of scholarship, one of the chief lessons of the entire affair was the necessity for further research on papyrus forgeries. None of the initial discussions of the papyrus (and here I explicitly include my own) compared it in detail to known forgeries. In part this was because the most commonly known class of papyrus forgeries discussed in the few previous treatments of the subject are nearly all nonsense scribbles, not even in real scripts or languages. Few of these treatments even mention the largest collection of forged papyri, those created by Constantine Simonides in the mid 19^th century (though he has been referenced extensively in the debate over the Artemidorus papyrus, as its alleged fabricator). Research on forged papyri (including on the Simonides papyri) is now underway in several places, including work by teams from Macquarie University and the University of Agder (along with other Norwegian institutions), as well as Gregg Schwendner, Tommy Wasserman, and others. This research will not only help us understand papyrus forgeries better, but draw research onto forged papyri into alignment with research on forgery and fakes in many other disciplines.

No less than research on the palaeography, collection history, and the historiographical context of forged papyri, this case highlighted the necessity for further collaborative research with specialists in various analytical techniques, especially analysis of ink. One of the surprises for me was just how little we know about the composition of ancient ink: breezy statements such as ‘ink, the easiest thing to forge’, regularly made during discussion of these papyri, belie the fact there are significant gaps in our knowledge about how ancient inks were made. The holy grail is of course a way to date ink, but in advance of that, work from teams and scientists at Columbia University, Copenhagen, Berlin, and elsewhere, using various techniques (Ramen spectroscopy, XRF, SEM and others) promises to teach us much about a subject on which we know surprisingly less than we might have thought.

Tone

Finally, among the disquieting aspects of this affair was the tone evident in some of the discussion : language that was variously unfortunately chosen, polemical, hyperbolic, sexist, loaded, and sometimes wholly unnecessarily vicious was used on all sides of the debate. Not always, certainly, and assuredly not by everyone: but with noticeable frequency. The motives, backgrounds, affiliation (in academic, confessional, and socio-political terms) of some of the scholars involved in the debate was subject to imputation, implication, and worse. Carrie Schroder (in the in-press article I referred to above) and Eva Mroczek have highlighted some of these aspects of the debate, and the implications, but they bear further reflection. In part, this tone was a result of the debate playing out across the media and the internet, when anonymous commenting and the ability to say whatever comes into one’s head allow a far less regulated discussion (and here again the contributions of Liv Lied I mentioned above are important). Much of this democratisation of discussion is for the better; but this does not mean that the manner in which this debate was often conducted should model future such discussions.

Malcolm.

At the 2015 Society of Biblical Literature Annual meeting in Atlanta, I took part in a panel entitled “Provenance in an eBay World: Does the Provenance of Ancient Artifacts Matter?”, organised by the SBL Student Advisory Board. The other panelists were Christine Thomas, Bob Kraft, and Sofia Torallos Tovar. The audience contained many people with different sorts of stakes in this debate, and there was an extremely interesting discussion after the four panelists had spoken. As I’m not going to publish my remarks on that day formally, I thought I’d put them here. I’ve edited the remarks below for style and clarity, in particular clarifying some aspects in response to questions and comments which made me realise I hadn’t been as clear as I might have been about what I believe, expanding a few points which I mentioned very briefly, and including some elements which I did not get the opportunity to address at all. But this is basically what I said:

As most people will know, I’ve worked on papyri with virtually every type of provenance: papyri excavated in archaeological context; in collections formed before and after 1972; and on papyri with disputed collection histories. So I think I have a broad range of perspectives to bring to bear on this discussion.

I am very pleased to see this forum at this meeting; I am pleased it is the student advisory board which is sponsoring it, which shows that the academy of the future is taking this issues seriously. I’ve noticed the same thing in the graduate Historiography seminar that I teach with Rachel Yuen-Collingridge at Macquarie, in which we teach a three week block on ethics, authenticity, archaeology, and the antiquities trade: students five years ago thought these issues were irrelevant; now they are taking them very seriously. You can also see the new prominence of the issue in abstracts and calls for papers for the annual meeting. In her remarks in this session, Christine Thomas stated that authenticity is the key issue, and I fully agree: the interrelated issues raised by questions of ethics and authenticity in the way we interact with antiquity, and the ancient material record are the key issues we have to deal with as scholars in the discipline.

The organisers of the Panel asked us: “Does provenance matter”? If this is reduced to a binary set of answers, then that answer must be yes. It always helps to know the precise context from which something comes; if things are to be taken from their original context it is always preferable by far that they be found in a controlled excavation rather than by looting or in an amateur treasure hunt. To turn that around, it is highly unsatisfactory to remove an item from its archaeological context in anything other than a proper excavation.

So, yes, provenance matters. However, there are some qualifications which should be made:

Firstly: what does “provenance” mean? In papyrology, the term commonly does not refer to where we know something was found, but where we think it must or might have been found, or where it might have been written. Content, prosopography, dialect, and collection history all provide clues which in many cases allow the assignment of secure, or relatively secure, provenance in papyrological terms. Many different sorts of examples could be provided of this: sometimes a term, name, or internal reference can show that a text must have been written in a certain location. Of course, they may not have been found there. At times, we can reasonably deduce where papyri were found, but some uncertainly remains: the fourth-century Melitian monastic archives of Paieous and Apa Nepheros were probably found in or near the monastery of Hathor, which the texts tell us was in the south of the Heracleopolite nome, near the village of Hipponon (modern Qarara); but the exact location of the monastery is unknown. Other archives were clearly found in certain locations, but they were not removed in controlled excavations: rather, they were found by locals, and sold on the antiquities market, such as the archives of Zenon (Philadelpheia / Gharabet el-Gerza), Heroninos (Theadelpheia / Batn el-Harit), Dioskoros (Aphrodito / Kom Ishgau). Some texts were found in what might be loosely called an “excavation”, but no records were kept of exactly where they were found: an example of this is the Coptic ostraca from the monastery of Phoibamon at Thebes (the so-called Deir el-Bahri, “northern monastery”, on the upper terraces of the mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut in the Theban necropolis) whose provenance was so poorly recorded (or, indeed, not recorded) by Edouard Naville that Crum, who first published many of them, had to deduce the fact that they came from there. In other cases, basic records were kept of the excavation of papyri, but no proper stratigraphy is known, such as with the Oxyrhynchus papyri, and relating papyri to each other in terms of exactly where they were found is very difficult.

So we can talk of these texts having a provenance in papyrological terms. But not in other terms, of course. What level of controlled excavation is necessary to talk about an artefact having “provenance”? I ask this genuinely.

Another qualification: Unprovenanced artefacts (in the “core” sense, that their find spot is not certainly known) can sometimes provide valuable information about the ancient world. The discourse that they tell us nothing, which has escaped from academic thought bubbles into popular culture, is both false and unfortunate. We know more about many sites in Egypt and the ancient near east from unprovenanced texts than we can ever know from archaeology, and it is faintly ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

There are some unfortunate consequences of the canonisation of the 1972 date of the entry into force of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. One is that the phrase “publishing unprovenanced artefacts” is now commonly taken to mean “publishing unprovenanced artefacts (which were acquired after 1972)”: objects acquired before 1972 are assumed to have a “provenance” for legal purposes. It is not uncommon to see phrases like “a secure pre-1972 provenance”, which can simply mean that the object was looted before 1972. Here there is more than the faint smell of the forgiveness of the terrible destruction and disruption of cultural heritage and traditions that colonialism engendered in many parts of the world. We are never well-served by white-washing the past, and with the best intentions in the world, this is what the fixation on 1972 as a border forms. Whatever one thinks about this larger issue (and in my own country at least there is a considerable body of public opinion which refuses to see any negative impact of colonialism), many artefacts acquired before 1972 have no sort of provenance at all, and thus the discourse which suggests they do merely helps to degrade a proper understanding of what “provenance” actually means.

There are thus two essential questions: what to do now, and what to do about the thousands (and probably hundreds of thousands) of unprovenanced post-1972 artefacts in public and private collections world wide. To take the second issue first: I support the upholding of the UNESCO convention, and the drawing of a line in the sand after which we should not acquire unprovenanced artefacts, or legitimate them by working on them. I do remain concerned that this consigns everything purchased by collecting institutions after 1972 to a limbo in which nothing is allowed to be published or discussed. This leaves these orphaned objects to languish in limbo: artefactual ghosts whose name dare not be spoken, acquired after a date which is arbitrary in that it does not relate to any event except the convention itself. In many senses, this line seems too distant, and the objects behind its curtain too many, to be profitable. But what is the alternative?

Within papyrology, this issue first came strongly to the fore in a special panel at the 2007 International congress of Papyrology at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. Shortly thereafter the American Society of Papyrologists published a Resolution Concerning the Illicit Trade in Papyri, and the International association of Papyrologists formed a Working Party on the Commerce in Papyri which published recommendations. At Macquarie, we put an indefinite moratorium on the purchase of any papyri or related textual material. 2007 is probably too recent a line, is of course itself totally arbitrary, and can be easily suggested to be self-serving. But the point is that acquisitions of papyri over the past decade took place in a context in which these issues were well known in the field (unlike, say, in the 1970’s, when there was limited recognition of these issues with academia) and no one acquiring papyri at this time can claim otherwise. Nevertheless, there is no date beyond 1972 which makes any sense, and is any less arbitrary, than the date of the UN convention. We must have a date to enforce a system, and there is no other date which makes much if any sense.

In terms of the present and the future: What we certainly must do now as a guild is not trade in, publish, evaluate, or authenticate, antiquities which we suspect have come from source countries recently. So this directly effects scholarly participation in the antiquities trade, at any remove, be it working directly for a dealer to evaluate an artefact, or working on something a collector provides. In my view, the problem is not the trade of “post-1972 antiquities”: the problem is the antiquities trade. The dates of the various conventions have encouraged the proliferation of a flourishing industry forging pre-1972 provenance documents. Those who want the antiquities trade to continue must make positive arguments for its value to humanity, not just fall back either on its inevitability, or the attraction of owning antiquities; much less that it is a human right to possess them. Just because people like owning antiquities is no reason to continue the trade in them: people liked owning slaves, and ivory objects; at times in human history both seemed either inevitable consequences of the human condition or cherished rights, or indeed both. But both were swept away as humanity realised that neither were necessary, beneficial, or ethical. Please let no one make the simplistic reduction that I am comparing antiquities dealers or collectors to slave traders or ivory poachers: I am just pointing out that things can change, and inviting you to consider whether this one should too. It is all well and good to say that we need to train collectors to purchase only “provenanced” antiquities (which can mean as little as that they were looted before 1972) but so long as it is simple to forge a pre-1972 provenance, this does not seem a sustainable solution.

The ASOR  Policy on Professional conduct dispenses with a date with regard to one class of textual object, cuneiform tablets. The “cuneiform exception” is justified in the guidelines on three grounds.

1. in zones of conflict since the early-1990s, most prominently in Iraq and Syria but also elsewhere, looting of cuneiform tablets has occurred on a truly massive scale;

2. cuneiform texts may be authenticated more readily than other categories of epigraphic archaeological heritage;

3. the content of a cuneiform text can provide information independent of archaeological provenience.

ASOR meetings and journals can consequently be the site of first publication of new cuneiform texts, subject to strict conditions, including that they be returned to their country of origin, if such is possible, after publication (the actual text is a good deal more complicated than that, as those who want to check the policy can see). If these guidelines were adopted by the SBL, could such a case be made for any other type of textual object. I guess the two main candidates would be papyri, parchment, and related material in Greek, Coptic, Hebrew and Aramaic from Egypt and the Dead Sea region, and inscriptions from the latter location. Inscriptions from Turkey and elsewhere might also be at issue. The third condition is fulfilled by virtually all textual artefacts, so is easily met. However, the fact that the authenticity of a considerable number of different types of text-bearing objects of different sorts in recent years strongly suggests that the authentication of these objects is not quite as straightforward as it is claimed to be in the case of cuneiform texts (I must admit I am not quite sure why this is a justification for the cuneiform exception, but to the extent that it prevents the publication of forgeries, it is a positive). And while there has been considerable unrest in Egypt, Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, it cannot be realistically claimed to be on the scale and level as witnessed in Syria and Iraq. So, the cuneiform exception cannot provide a model for the publication of papyri from Egypt or parchment from the Dead Sea region.

In conduction with the antiquities trade, another issue readily presents itself for discussion: is it only the illegal antiquities trade which is fuelling looting? Or do the legal antiquities trade, museum exhibitions, and archaeology itself also contribute? I am not, naturally, putting all these issues on same moral level: I am merely asking if the sale of, say, a fragment of the New Testament on papyrus for a huge price from a “legal” collection acts as any less an incentive to a potential looter (or forger) than the sale of an unprovenanced piece? It is certainly true that discouraging the sale of unprovenanced antiquities makes it less attractive to loot artefacts by making it harder to sell them: but as long as there continues to be a thriving market in pieces from “old Swiss collections” (or similar), forging “pre-1972 provenances” remains relatively simple, strategies such as inserting more recently found texts in older collections remains possible, and there are scholars ready (and indeed eager) to legitimate this materials by working on it, then the incentive will remain. And there seems every likelihood that the current bibliomania for ancient books – especially Jewish and Christian scripture, where prices have reached previously unimaginable figures in the tens of millions – is driving not only looting, but also forgery.

So let us have these discussions: are we saving antiquities from terrorists, or enabling them by sending them money? Are we making sure antiquities end up in places where they will be cared for and cherished, or further swelling museum storerooms filled with hundreds or thousands of objects no one will ever see? Are we searching for material to better understand the antecedents of modern society, or destroying unique objects on the off-chance (which lies somewhere between minuscule and delusional) that fragments of Christian scripture will be found therein?

Provenance also matters in a wider sense: issues of how and where artefacts were found do not apply only to looting. This is not just a discussion about traded antiquities: archaeology itself it is not a separate issue. The provenance of something matters if it was excavated in occupied territory; if accommodations with dictatorial regimes were made to allow its excavation; if the manner in which its excavators conduct themselves serves to carry forward and reinforce colonial mentalities and power structures. We also need to recognise that archaeological work sometimes serves to tell the looters where to look. Most of these things do not apply to most archaeological missions; but when they do, we need to consider them as part of the discussion. Too often, the discussion is configured as one between archaeologists, nobly saving the past for the future, and those who study textual or other artefacts (but especially the former), who are at times depicted as enabling the evil of the antiquities trade. To be sure, one encounters with depressing frequency comments which indicate that preserving the text for the future is all that matters, with all other consideration secondary. And most archaeologists do not take an irksome self-righteous tone or perpetuate colonialism with their attitude to current inhabitants of he lands in which they dig. But this dichotomy lies underneath the surface, and is, to say the least, unhelpful.

Papyrology, and manuscript collection in general, has been one of the problem areas in this issue, with regular purchases of papyri on the antiquities market, right down to recently, and transparently continuing. Papyrology has many issues to deal with in this regard, and I will promise to work, along with others, on dealing with them, if those in other fields promise to encourage a more self-reflexive attitude among all their members, and address some of the ethical issues which seem apparent to those of us outside. It is a discussion I look forward to participating in.

Malcolm Choat