I have a certain amount of time for the antiquities trade.\u00a0 If it did not exist, there can be little doubt that the majority of papyrus codices discovered in Egypt in the last century would have gone into the fires of local farm-workers in that country (and some did anyway).\u00a0 The fact that, in modern Egypt, even the simplest know that\u00a0“antiquities” is spelled “cash” has undoubtedly preserved much ancient literature for us, from the Nag Hammadi finds to the ps.Gospel of Judas, and much else.<\/p>\n
I can think of no rational reason why someone should not collect ancient coins or statuary (should he have room enough), and I tend to feel no urge to tell other people what they should do.\u00a0 Nor do I feel that “public” collections are always the best; private owners can very often be more helpful in providing access than indifferent officials.<\/p>\n
On the other hand anyone who looks at what happened to the four codices, including the ps.Gospel of Judas, and their dismal fate of damage and dismemberment — because the owners did not safeguard the items properly and instead handed them to a man willing to chop them up — must feel something less than pleasure at what the antiquities trade sometimes involves.\u00a0 The amount of illegal digging now going on all over Egypt,\u00a0in hopes of\u00a0a quick profit, while archaeology is destroyed, must pain us all.<\/p>\n
Readers of this blog will take it for granted that the material remains of antiquity should be preserved, recorded and published, both\u00a0formally and online.\u00a0 We all believe that destroying what remains of the ancient world costs each of us something.<\/p>\n
But\u00a0for me it\u00a0is\u00a0genuinely difficult to know what to think on this question.<\/p>\n
On the one hand, now that order has broken down in Libya, local businessmen are selling the ruins of Cyrene as building land to each other; a sure indication of what happens when antiquity brings no profit to the modern inhabitants.\u00a0 If antiquity is worth nothing, as it was in the middle ages, then marble has a value if we burn it for lime, and land is always in demand, building materials are desirable,\u00a0and explosives are cheap.\u00a0 The fate of the temple of Horus the Elder at Armant, still standing when Napoleon came to Egypt but blown up for materials to build a sugar factory by Mohammed Ali, is one that many other sites might experience.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, the ready market for small, easily portable finds causes Italian and Greek peasants to rob tombs, and, in most of Europe, metal-detector enthusiasts to secretly destroy invaluable archaeological evidence in the hope of striking it rich.\u00a0 The current recession must have provoked a boom in such activity.<\/p>\n
In Britain, metal-detectorists are encouraged to work with archaeologists.\u00a0 It’s not illegal to use these gadgets.\u00a0 There are well-understood (and generous) returns to finders, who are thereby encouraged to hand finds in to local archaeological units.\u00a0 A general sense of amity and cooperation seems to exist, unknown elsewhere.<\/p>\n
One of the blogs I follow is Cultural Property Observer, which ‘champions the longstanding interests of collectors in the Preservation, Study, Display and Enjoyment of Cultural Artifacts Against an “Archaeology Over All” Perspective’.\u00a0 The current article<\/a>, drew my attention to some disputes in the world of archaeology.<\/p>\n