Five Egyptian Antiquities Seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art – RisePEI

5 Egyptian antiques collectively valued at greater than $3 million, have been seized from the Metropolitan Museum by the New York District Legal professional’s Workplace. The confiscation is a part of an intensive investigation into the worldwide trafficking of Egyptian antiquities that final week led to the indictment of former president and director of the Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez.

Information of the seizure was first reported by the Artwork Newspaper and confirmed to the outlet by the DA’s workplace, which stated in its warrant that the 5 objects represent proof demonstrating “the crimes of prison possession of stolen property” and “conspiracy to commit the identical crimes.”

4 of the items got here from the gathering of Roben Dib, a German-Lebanese seller who’s suspected by U.S. and French authorities of promoting looted objects to artwork establishments together with the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork and the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Dib is at present detained in Paris, the place he’s awaiting trial on costs of gang fraud and cash laundering. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Among the many artifacts seized had been two treasures from the Met’s Egyptian division. One is a resplendent Fayum portrait, a painted panel generally positioned over the face of mummies in Roman Egypt. That work depicts a lady in a blue gown and dates to round 60 BCE.

The opposite seized work consists of 5 fragments of a wall hanging from the 4th or fifth century CE. They’re thought of one of many oldest representations of the Guide of Exodus.

A Met spokesperson didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon the seizure of those works.

In response to the warrant, each gadgets had been bought via the Paris public sale home Pierre Bergé & Associates, which employed Christophe Kunicki, a French seller and archeology professional indicted within the investigation. Kunicki served as a certifying professional of archaeological works at Pierre Bergé; he listed the provenance of the antiquities bought to the Met as “a European assortment.” Authorities consider this refers back to the assortment of three brothers, Simon, Hagop and Serop Simonian, who’re suspected of collaborating with Dib.

The Met has been contending with its connections to Dib for a number of years.

In 2019, the New York establishment returned an ornate golden sarcophagus to Egypt after a prison investigation led by Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, chief of the antiquities trafficking unit of the DA’s workplace. Bogdanos concluded that the provenance had been falsified previous to the Met’s buy of it in 2017 for €3.5 million. The Met had purchased the sarcophagus straight from Kunicki, who obtained it from Dib and the Simonian brothers. Kunicki and his husband, Richard Semper, had been charged in 2020 with involvement within the antiquity smuggling ring.

On the time the coffin was seized, the Met apologized in a press release for the failings within the provenance analysis carried out by its Egyptian division and promised to reassess its acquisition course of.

The painted linen hanging of the exodus and the Fayum portrait had been bought for $1.4 million and $1.6 million, respectively, between 2013 and 2015. Throughout that point the museum additionally purchased a limestone stele (dated from 1770 BCE) for round $266,000 and a stele (ca. 650 BCE) depicting a desk of providing to the god Hathor for about $85,000.

A sarcophagus masks valued round $6,500 was additionally confiscated by the DA’s workplace. In response to the Artwork Newspaper, all of the objects had been provided on the market by Dib.