The Nefertiti Bust: Art Nouveau Ripoff?

On the heels of the Ebay report, Al-Arabiya reports (via AFP) fresh controversy over the authenticity of a famous artifact. This time, it is the famous bust of Nefertiti:

Housed in a Berlin museum, the iconic bust is one of the most copied works of ancient Egypt but its legitimacy has been put into question by Swiss art historian, Henri Stierlin, who claims that the bust is just a copy dating from 1912.

Zahi Hawass, naturally, is less than pleased:

"Stierlin is not a historian. He is delirious," Zahi Hawas, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities told AlArabiya.

As always, everyone has a motive. If the head were fake, then the Germans would be off the hook for holding on to what everybody knows is a stolen artifact. They could replace their much-deserved shame with a cute story about an archaeologist who just wanted to "test some ancient pigments" on a new bust, and make the ancient queen look pretty by painting her with a necklace. How nice!

By the same token, the Egyptians have a lot invested in the iconography of Nefertiti - and have spent time and energy in demanding the return of the bust. If it were fake, they would lose not only their symbol and their efforts but also one of their negotiating chips with Western governments in the ongoing game of repatriation.

It also illuminates one of the worst results of looting. If no one keeps records of when and where artifacts came out of the ground, then no one has any idea what is fake. Being left holding a fake is an ironic and appropriate punishment - a tisis if you will - for curators and collectors who let their lust for possession overwhelm their moral compass. But the consequences for scholars are more serious. Take the Cycladic figurines: of the 1,600 known examples, only 150 came from known contexts. The rest are so riddled with fakes that they are totally useless for archaeologists and objects of suspicion and mockery by laypeople.

Regardless of whether the bust is fake or not, then, the real crime is that Ludwig Borchhardt concealed the find, then hid the existence of the artifact for a decade, erasing all hope of confirming its provenience. His cupidity and cowardice are the real reasons this question even exists.

EBay and the economics of fake artifacts

Chuck Stanish has an interesting piece in this month's Archaeology on EBay and the illegal antiquities trade:

Our greatest fear was that the Internet would democratize antiquities trafficking and lead to widespread looting. This seemed a logical outcome of a system in which anyone could open up an eBay site and sell artifacts dug up by locals anywhere in the world. We feared that an unorganized but massive looting campaign was about to begin, with everything from potsherds to pieces of the Great Wall on the auction block for a few dollars. But a very curious thing has happened. It appears that electronic buying and selling has actually hurt the antiquities trade.

I'm happy to discover a silver lining of any kind in EBay's shameful facilitation of the illegal antiquities trade. And to be honest, it's satisfying to see wealth transferred from unscrupulous, well-heeled collectors who encourage the destruction of sites to unscrupulous, needy artisans who are not destroying sites.

However, in most places it's development, not illicit pot-hunting, that constitutes the major long-term threat to the archaeological record. And here is where I see a possible wrinkle. If the success of forgery as a cottage industry encourages local people to treat the material remains of the past as a commodity that can simply be manufactured to meet outside demand, they then have little economic incentive to preserve intact archaeological sites, unless these serve some other end, such as attracting tourists or archaeologists.

Of course I don't mean to imply that forging artifacts necessarily precludes the kind of respectful stewardship of genuine past material culture that archaeologists--for a variety of motives, not all disinterested--like to see local folks exhibit. But EBay might well end up saving sites from the looter's spade only for them to be destroyed by construction backhoes.

-SB