Is Berlin Museum's Hatshepsut a Forgery?

(Image from Wikipedia Commons, identified as: bust of the pharoah Hatshepsut, taken at the Altes Museum, Berlin (part of the Ägyptisches Museum Berlin collection), taken by Keith Schengili-Roberts in 2006. I think this is the bust referred to in the article, but I wouldn't swear to it on a stack of bibles). Egyptian bust in Berlin museum may be fake July 19 2009 at 04:35PM Berlin - An Egyptian bust acquired at vast expense by a Berlin museum more than two decades ago may be a forgery. The bust in brown granite of female Pharaoh Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt for 22 years, is one of the draws at the German capital's Egyptian Museum and is only outshone by the limestone bust of exquisite Queen Nefertiti. Scientists at the Technical University of Berlin have discovered the Hatshepsut stone is rich in the minerals magnesite and siderite. No other bust from the Nile region is made of such rock, suggesting that the 16.5cm figure might be a modern fake. Asked for comment, Dieter Wildung, the recently retired director of the museum, said he had not been aware of the scientific study. The museum reportedly paid 1 million marks (R5.9 million) to buy the statue in 1986 from Robin Symes of Britain but Wildung declined to confirm its price."The purchase was long before my time," said Wildung, who became head of the museum in 1989 and retired two weeks ago. He criticised the media for "sneakily" going public with the report without clearance from the museum. Hatshepsut died in 1458 BC.

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Why did they have the piece tested? Did someone on staff suspect it was a forgery? Surprisingly, this time I actually found answers to my questions! Check this post out from Google Groups, by Tom Flynn on July 21, 2009: University denies test on Egyptian bust in Berlin Posted : Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:23:40 GMT Author : DPA Earth Times: Berlin - A German university denied Monday that it had analysed the bust of Pharaoh Hatshepsut, an Egyptian sculpture at a Berlin museum, or suggested the statue was a forgery. The bust of the female ruler is one of the icons of the Egyptian Museum in the city. It was acquired for 1 million marks (510,000 euros or about 715,000 dollars) two decades ago. A news report Sunday said a test of the stone suggested it might be a fake. But the Technical University of Berlin said it had never studied the bust's authenticity. Scientists had in December 2007 merely studied some tiny flakes of stone found on the statue. "The analysis found these flakes were made of rock rich in the minerals magnesite and siderite. Where these flakes came from has not been established," a statement by the university said. The German news magazine Der Spiegel had asserted such rock was not sculpted in any other known Pharaonic statue and that this implied the figure was fake. Hatshepsut ruled Egypt for 22 years till her death in 1458 BC. Her 16.5-centimetre-high brown granite bust is a key draw at the museum, along with a limestone bust of exquisite Queen Nefertiti. The Berlin museum has been criticized by Cairo officials for refusing to give Nefertiti's bust, regarded as a national treasure, back to Egypt. Link: http://tinyurl.com/n6xxaz

Antiquities Fraud Redux

A further take on a subject I posted about a few days ago. (Image from article: Forms to cast fake 2nd to 3rd century coins found in Trier, Germany. Chris 73/Wikipedia licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.5) EBay Changing the Face of Antiquities Trade By Kat Piper, Epoch Times Staff May 30, 2009 With the launch of online auction website eBay over a decade ago, archaeologists feared that antiquities trafficking would suddenly become much more accessible and lead to increased looting of ancient sites. But in fact, eBay has inadvertently created a vast market for fake artifacts, according to Dr Charles “Chip” Stanish, UCLA professor of Anthropology and expert in Andean archaeology. Dr Stanish has followed items listed as antiquities on eBay for nine years. He has also worked with the US customs service and visited workshops in Peru and Bolivia that specialize in making reproductions of pottery. Rather than investing energy in looting, “[Greek], Chinese, Bulgarian, Egyptian, Peruvian and Mexican workshops are now producing fakes at a frenetic pace,” writes Dr Stanish in the May/June issue of the journal Archaeology. “People who used to make a few dollars selling a looted artifact to a middleman in their village can now produce their own ‘almost-as-good-as-old’ objects and go directly to a person in a nearby town who has an eBay account,” he said. “They will receive the same amount or even more than they could have received for actual antiquities.” The proliferation of fakes has depressed the value of real artifacts, acting as a further disincentive to looting, said Dr Stanish. When he first started tracking eBay sales of South American antiquities, Dr Stanish estimated that the ratio of real to fake artifacts was 50:50. Five years later, 95 per cent were fakes. But the quality of the fakes has improved so much that Dr Stanish admits that he can’t always tell. He estimates that about 30 per cent of objects currently listed as “antiquities” are obvious fakes and only 5 per cent are genuine. Modern forging techniques are so good nowadays it is “almost impossible” or prohibitively expensive to authenticate objects using current methods, said Dr Stanish. As long as there are people willing to buy the “genuine” Peruvian Moche pottery, currently being sold for as little as $US160 on eBay (a real pot is worth about $US16,000), the trade will continue to flourish, as will the quality of reproductions. Looting, which is illegal, is the bane of archaeologists because looters rarely remove artifacts using appropriate scientific methods, or record where they came from, so make the objects harder to date and break their valuable link to the wider context of the site and cultural heritage.

Antiquities Fraud Abounds on the Internet

Story from The Los Angeles Times 'Ancient' artifacts, cyber scams Archaeologists and legitimate antiquities dealers warn that most EBay sellers are duping bargain-hunters looking to buy a piece of the past on the cheap. By Mike Boehm May 29, 2009 When Charles "Chip" Stanish, director of UCLA's Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, craves a good laugh over human folly, he knows it's just a mouse-click away, on EBay's crowded bazaar of ancient artifacts. A reddish clay pot in the shape of a man's head pops onto the computer screen in his office beneath the campus' Fowler Museum. Stanish notes its wide-eyed, gape-mouthed face and tries to stifle a laugh, but there's no helping himself. The tousle-haired anthropologist, who researches ancient commerce and communal life in the mountainous Lake Titicaca region of Peru, is slain again. "Look at this stupid face with the stupid grin," he says. "The teeth are ridiculous. The eyes are goofy. . . . It's something you'd find at the Lima airport," selling for a few bucks. On EBay, the seller is advertising it as a mint-condition artifact of Peru's Nazca culture -- a depiction of a warrior, possibly 2,000 years old. It's yours for $499.99, satisfaction backed with a "lifetime guarantee," as long as that lifetime expires within the 14-day window for returns. Customers have given this seller a satisfaction rating of nearly 100%. "Oh, I have such a good time," Stanish says. "Sometimes I put it on my TV, and my friends and I have some glasses of wine and crack up." Rest of article. Just for the heck of it, I did a quick search at ebay for antiquities and located this "bronze figure amulet/Ra genuine." It is said to be 5.7 cm in height. No representation is made as to the age of the piece. Now darlings, I'm sure no expert, but after taking a look at this two times, I decided that if it is anything, it's an amulet of Sekhmet, the Goddess in the form of a lioness (an aspect of Goddess Hathor), and is not Ra, although there is a connection because Ra was Sekhmet's father (Sekhmet was one of the "Eyes of Ra"), if memory serves. About the first image above, it could be said it is at least questionable as to what god or goddess the amulet is meant to represent, given what I consider its poor condition; the second image shows a side profile of the amulet and indicates to me the distinctive profile of Sekhmet, along with the remains of her Sun crown enclosed by the Uraeus. For a comparison, check out the images at the Wikipedia entry on Sekhmet. I suppose just because I think it's something other than Ra doesn't mean it's a fraud. I also point out the poor condition of this piece of bronze. I've only seen photos on the internet and in catalogs and books and also in person at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Musem of Art (fresh in my mind as we returned from New York on May 19th), so I'm no expert on what the condition of an "ancient" Egyptian bronze should be, since the only ones I've seen have been in generally good condition, considering that most of them came from inside tombs. Perhaps this bronze amulet was owned by a camel herder and had a really rough life, being caught in sand storms and such. Or perhaps it came out of a really bad mold and was then suitably "antiqued" to look like something that might be 2,000 or more years old. Only the Shadow knows... For reasons that I believe will be clear to my readers, I'm not providing a link :)