Egypt faces obstacles in recovering antiquities

By MARJORIE OLSTER

CAIRO, Egypt - More than half a century ago, a prominent Egyptian archaeologist unearthed a stunning ancient mummy mask at the Saqqara pyramids near Cairo - the golden image of a noblewoman's face.

Mohammed Zakaria Ghoneim deposited the 3,200-year-old relic in a warehouse at Saqqara, where he meticulously documented his discovery. Seven years later, in 1959, Egyptian records show it was still in the same storeroom.

What happened to the burial mask of Ka Nefer Nefer in the four decades that followed is a mystery.

It resurfaced in 1998 when the St. Louis Art Museum acquired it. And now it is at the center of one of the most acrimonious fights in the antiquities world.

The case lays bare the complexities involved in growing efforts by Egypt and other countries to reclaim artifacts stolen or looted from their ancient civilizations.

Local and international laws are often inadequate or nonexistent. The process requires delicate cooperation between government, law enforcement, museums, and antiquities dealers. And frequently, there are gaps in the historical records.

Claims are attracting increasing attention after prestigious institutions such as the J. Paul Getty Museum of Art in Los Angeles and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York agreed to return looted or stolen artwork or antiquities. Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's antiquities authority, said his country has recovered some 5,000 stolen artifacts since 2002, and is pursuing dozens more.

"This is the No. 1 case," he told The Associated Press in an interview. "Egypt has a right to the mask."

Hawass said there is no record showing the mask ever left Egypt legally. But the St. Louis museum contends Egypt has not proven it was stolen.

"That is a charge we took very seriously," museum director Brent Benjamin told the AP. "If that is true, there is no question that the museum would return the object," he said.

St. Louis also sent a letter to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo saying it had acquired the mask and that in its response, the Egyptian museum did not indicate the item was stolen. Egypt accuses St. Louis of falsifying the provenance, which documents the history of ownership of an artifact.

The museum's provenance puts the mask in the possession of a Belgium art dealer in 1952. However, Egypt can show that it was in the Saqqara storeroom in both 1952 and 1959, making it improbable it ever left there, especially to a foreign country, in the intervening years.

"It did not leave Egypt legally," said Hawass. "There would have been a record of this."

Benjamin acknowledged that "there is certainly uncertainty about how it moved from person to person."

St. Louis claimed the mask left the country after it was "awarded" to Ghoneim as "partage" - a practice of dividing archaeological finds between the host country and the excavator - and appeared on the European art market shortly thereafter.

However, Hawass said partage was never practiced by Egyptian archaeologists, only with foreign excavation teams. He noted that Ghoneim had thanked the Egyptian government for allowing him to use photos of the mask, acknowledging the country's ownership.

"I think things are a bit cloudy," said Egyptologist Peter Lacovara, curator of ancient Egyptian art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta. "It would be incumbent on St. Louis to prove that somehow it went from being excavated to St. Louis, that it went out of the country in a legitimate way."

Lacovara said the difficulty of monitoring Egypt's vast stores of artifacts explains how the mask could have disappeared for decades without anyone noticing, especially before the era of computers.

"It's a great masterpiece. It's really a tragedy it has been hidden away for so long," he said.

Another theory is that Ghoneim stole the mask, an idea Hawass dismisses out of hand as impossible given his stellar reputation. Ghoneim died in 1959.

The provenance contained at least one other red flag for the Egyptians.

St. Louis bought the mask in 1998 for half a million dollars from Phoenix Ancient Art gallery in Geneva, Switzerland. The gallery is owned by Lebanese brothers Hicham and Ali Aboutaam, two of the world's most powerful antiquities dealers.