I Talk to an Egyptologist About Antiquities Trafficking and Mummy Unwrapping Parties
they are, unfortunately, exactly what they sound like
One of Cairo’s urban legends is a rags-to-riches story. A family in one of the city’s slums becomes wealthy overnight with no explanation for the change in their fortunes. But friends and neighbors know the family’s secret, because it happens all the time: they found a cache of ancient artifacts—either by digging under their house or by some happy accident—and sold it on the black market for a tidy sum.
The tale sounds far-fetched, and I wasn’t sure I believed it at first. So I called up my extremely cool friend Emily Smith-Sangster, a real-life Egyptologist (!) who is working on her PhD at Princeton. Emily spends her days doing research in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (i.e. the Hogwarts library in the Harry Potter movies) and excavating ancient cemeteries in Upper Egypt; picture Rachel Weisz in The Mummy and you’ll have a solid approximation.
I asked Emily if the legend rang true. “Oh, a hundred percent,” she told me. “In Egypt, history is built on history is built on history. So it’s not surprising that either someone’s been digging in their basement or a pipe breaks in the street and suddenly you’re in, like, a tomb shaft or something.” This phenomenon isn’t new—in the 1870s, a single family enriched themselves by selling items from a royal tomb they’d discovered near Luxor. Colonial and local authorities eventually found them out, questioning and allegedly torturing two of the brothers until one of them gave up the tomb’s location.
Torture notwithstanding, selling antiquities you found in your basement might seem like a great way to make a buck if it weren’t 1) highly illegal and 2) morally questionable. Egypt strictly prohibits (and harshly punishes) the export of antiquities, and from an ethical standpoint, no one person should get to own or profit from the world’s collective cultural heritage. “If you dig an antiquity up, it doesn’t belong to you specifically,” Emily says. “It belongs to society, so you don’t have a right to sell it.”
Regardless, the illicit antiquities trade thrives in Egypt. As Emily puts it, “it’s very hard to tell people, yes, this is your property, but you’re not allowed to dig in your basement. Or, if you find something, it doesn’t belong to you.” Underdevelopment means the poor often lack good economic options, and as long as the world’s elite—including celebrities and fancy museums—want to buy artifacts, someone who needs money will meet the demand. “If it’s between feeding your children and doing this, you’re going to choose to feed your children.”
The rest of my chat with Emily features sexy things like crime rings, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and Kim Kardashian. I also asked for her weirdest trafficking anecdote, and she casually answered, “the go-to is always the whole export of mummies during the Victorian era to consume. But I think that’s a fact everyone knows.” I DID NOT KNOW THIS FACT, PEOPLE.
Emily elaborated that upper-class Victorians liked to purchase mummies and either literally ingest their ground-up flesh—“usually as some sort of tonic or something like that, and they were thought to give you some sort of health benefit1”—or host parties to unwrap them. “They would have everyone come over and the point of the party was to unwrap the mummy, and whoever came got to take one of the things that was in the wrapping. So like, an amulet, or gold, or jewelry or something like that. And in typical colonialist fashion, the body was thrown away at the end.”
On that gross note, I will *wrap up* my intro! (I’ll see myself out.) Read my interview with Emily below, which has been condensed and edited for clarity, and then tell me in the comments how you would eat your mummy flakes if you were an upper-class Victorian!
Thanks for chatting with me, Emily! What’s your personal experience with the black market for antiquities? Have you had any run-ins with traffickers or illegal digging in your work in Egypt?
I personally have been lucky enough to avoid all of it. I think, as Egyptologists, we all get those e-mails from random people that are like, “can you authenticate an item I have?” Or something like, “my great-grandfather gave me this thing, can you take a look at it?” Usually most people say no, but nine times out of ten they’re fakes anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. I can get into why fakes are equally as problematic, too. My site of Abydos does, however, have a history of looting. I do know, when I was just out there, the Pyramid of Tetisheri2 had just been illegally dug into and they got really deep. They even put a metal cage in there so people could go down. Apparently they had been told by someone that there was gold down there, and there wasn’t anything.
That is bonkers.
I know, and it really does affect our work. Because if something is dug up and sent to the black market, we don’t see it. It destroys context and it destroys any sort of information we could get from that area. That’s not to say that an item pulled out of the ground is absolutely useless; quite the opposite. But we obviously would prefer to do it scientifically and keep it in the hands of the people it belongs to.
And it’s also appeared in pop culture events lately. There was the 2018 Met Gala where Kim Kardashian was photographed next to that golden coffin. That was the golden coffin of Nedjemankh and it turns out that was illegally purchased by the Met and actually had been smuggled out of Egypt.
So it also affects us in that way, in terms of: what are the things that are sitting in museums? Have they been legally acquired? And what’s the context? Unfortunately if the item has been illegally purchased, the context has usually been faked and the provenance has been faked so we don’t have all the information. But saying all that, I also don’t want to play up how much it affects me in the field as an archaeologist as opposed to the people of Egypt, who are actually losing their culture because people would prefer to sell it to rich people.
Who do you think are the main characters that are, say, looting a pyramid? And who are the different people who create the demand for it?
In terms of the people who create the demand, unfortunately it’s everything from private collectors to celebrities to museums themselves. Actually just a few months ago several curators from the Louvre were arrested for ignoring the provenance for items and convincing the Louvre Abu Dhabi to acquire things that had been illegally smuggled out of Egypt. So in terms of the people who are driving the black market, unfortunately sometimes it’s people within the field. And celebrities, I think Demi Lovato was just in trouble for buying stuff online—they were all fakes, at least according to the art world. So there’s people who just think it’s really cool to possess something that has this deep history.
But it’s important to question why you think that you should be the one to have it. Erin Thompson, who is an amazing scholar on the illicit antiquities trade, always says we’re super specific about making sure that the food we eat is ethically sourced, and the clothes we wear. We should think the same thing about antiquities.
In terms of the people on the ground, from what I understand there are some very large crime networks involved. Which gets very—I hate using this term, but it gets very sexy when you start talking about these large crime syndicates. And in Egypt, sometimes they’re employing people who maybe really need the money. And that’s where it becomes unfortunate, because if it’s between feeding your children and doing this, you’re going to choose to feed your children. I think anyone gets that innate human need. But then I am sure there are also people on the ground in Egypt who are actually involved in those crime syndicates, and they are working for them. It’s all very complicated.
I think it’s a lot of foreign individuals, too. I was told during my master’s program that there used to exist—I hope it no longer exists—an art studio in Switzerland where you could go and point to a relief in Egypt that you wanted and they would send someone to cut it off the wall for you. I don’t know the specifics. I think when you are rich enough to request something like that, there’s this feeling that you have a right to the world’s antiquities.
Slightly outside of Egypt though, in terms of people involved, it’s become extremely, extremely—I guess equally as—problematic if you’re buying antiquities from other locations, like Syria. You have to question whether the antiquities are being sold by terrorist organizations. That’s a really big thing. ISIS was using antiquities to fund a lot of their work.
That is another interesting thread—the international nature of this type of crime makes it really difficult to pin down. If someone is in an art gallery in Switzerland saying “I want this piece of a relief to be looted and shipped to me from Egypt,” is that person going to be extradited to Egypt to face punishment? Probably not.
Yeah, no. The Manhattan district attorney has been uncovering some really interesting connections to these crime syndicates and doing these sweeps of arresting people. The Louvre curators were part of this; it all gets woven back together.
But it’s interesting, because Kim Kardashian got scooped up into another one of these illicit antiquities trade conversations when it was found that she was being shipped an illegally excavated item from Italy. And she’s not being accused of any wrongdoing. It gets very complicated because it’s like, who knew? How do you prove who knew? The good thing is that the Antiquities Coalition—which is a great resource, too, highly suggest looking into them—established an agreement between the U.S. and Egypt in 2016. The goal is to protect Egyptian artifacts. The purpose was to switch the burden of proof off of Egypt and onto the importer. That is one way we can start to say, where are these things going and how do we punish the people who are doing it? If Egypt points out, “hey, the Met bought something that was illegally exported,” it’s not on Egypt to prove that, it’s then on the Met to prove that they actually have the paperwork and that it wasn’t falsified.
That’s interesting, because you can’t claim ignorance anymore. I’d go out on a limb and guess that when the curators at the Louvre claimed ignorance, that was actually self-serving, and they either knew or didn’t dig deep enough to find out what they didn’t want to know.
Oh, absolutely. I think they uncovered payments from a crime organization, too,3 so there are also people who, exactly, are being self-serving and completely know what’s going on. And it’s also—I don’t know, it’s not that hard to double-check the paperwork. I just feel like it’s a lame excuse to be like, “oh, well, the paperwork!” Do your research! Maybe that’s controversial, maybe don’t quote me on that!
No, I think it’s fair to say that if you want to own a priceless antiquity, with great privilege comes great responsibility, right? It should be your responsibility to look into the provenance of that item.
Exactly. If you’re seeing something that’s saying, “oh, well it was exported in 1969,” which is before the UNESCO deadline of export for most countries,4 well, that may not fly for the country you’re actually buying the antiquities of.
You’ve probably heard of the 95-year-old Australian woman who bought tons of Egyptian antiquities while her husband was a diplomat in the region in the 60s and 70s, and claims it was legal at the time—the Egyptian government disagrees.
Yeah. Egyptian law on exporting antiquities actually goes a lot further back than people think. The first one was in 1835, which was the High Order of Muhammed Ali. And then in 1912, there was a law that essentially introduced two kinds of state dealers. So it gets very complicated from there. And it’s totally within the rights of the Egyptian government to say, “okay, UNESCO says this, but our laws say earlier,” so you can’t plead ignorance. Ultimately, I think Egypt thinks that she did do something wrong, but I think a lot of other people don’t agree. I don’t know. I think like, why does she have the right to own all of that history? But that’s me, I guess.
I agree with you, because you can look at it through a purely legal lens and ask, were there any laws against this? But you can also just look at it through a moral and ethical lens and ask, was it your right to loot Egypt’s cultural heritage, regardless of whether it was legal or not?
Yeah, and a lot of people think “oh, well if I buy this thing, I can take better care of it,” which is basic colonialism and orientalism. But also, what gives you the right to be the caretaker of that item? Shouldn’t it go back to the country where it came from, especially if it was removed illegally?
To that point: a lot of Egyptian artifacts are still found in museums outside Egypt, probably the best-known example being the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum. In your view, how are museums rationalizing holding onto such things? Is their argument intellectually honest?
I think a big part of it relies on that legal argument, in terms of things that were legally exported beforehand. A lot of things also go back to early agreements between foreign archaeological missions and the Egyptian government. So back—oh forgive me, I can’t remember the date—back before a certain date, items had to be split, essentially, among the foreign expedition and among the government.5 And so a number of items were exported in that way, they returned home with the foreign expedition. So that’s a big part of that argument.
There is a push by a lot of people in the field and outside the field to create replicas of antiquities and keep them in, say, the British Museum, and then send the original items back to Egypt. The other thing is that there is still that colonialist argument that a lot of museums make that is essentially, “oh, we can take better care of the item.” And they use the Revolution6 as an example of that. Frankly, I think it’s nonsense to say something like that. It’s also not their responsibility. Who assigned the British as the cultural keepers of world heritage? They did. They decided that. And it’s also a question of power structure. If things are being passed to foreign institutions, especially by foreign expeditions that are run by, possibly, the former colonizer of the country, how do those power relations work?
These things all need to be re-analyzed in a way that isn’t just, “well it was legal at the time, so we’re going to keep it.” I think the future generations are doing a really good job of re-analyzing that. I was just in the UK and I overhead a lot of people younger than me discussing how everything in the British Museum is stolen, it’s a crime scene, what they would do. The problem is obviously not that black and white, but it seems like the next generation understands some of the complexities of museums and collecting that past generations maybe did not understand as well. That gives me faith that some big changes are coming and that the next generation won’t stand for the excuses that can arise in discussions of repatriation.
So say I’m that person who was digging in my backyard or had a pipe burst and found some potentially valuable artifact, and I decide I want to sell it. How do I go about that?
Oh god, that’s a great question. I’m not sure about that particularly. What I do know is the majority, or at least a good amount of antiquities are actually sold via eBay and Facebook.
Really??
Yes, and they are very easy to find. And I should add a little asterisk here that I do not encourage anyone to look or find them or anything like that. I don’t want anyone using this as a way to purchase antiquities! But apparently Facebook and eBay are two of the main suppliers of both fakes and real items. So I think it depends on what the person is looking for in terms of what the payday looks like. You also have to wonder, is it safer for them to list it on Facebook—who for some reason don’t think they should take those types of things down—instead of dealing with someone who may be connected to a larger crime syndicate and may end up screwing you over?
And unfortunately—just circling back to the fakes—the reason that fakes are as much of an issue is a lot of times the fakes are also being sold by these actual antiquities dealers to cover overhead or to cover up the fact that they’re actually selling real stuff on the side. It’s all interwoven. It’s a lot of dealers, either intentionally or not, claiming something is real and then selling a fake. If it’s a fake, then some people might be like, “oh, we don’t have to worry about that guy, because he’s just selling fakes.” So a lot of people might be like, “ooh, I am going to buy this real shabti,”7 and it’s very clearly not real to a specialist, but to someone in the general public it might look real. If the market is getting flooded with all these fakes, you know, no one is really going to go after someone who is just selling fakes, so they might be able to slip through the cracks. Whereas if you walk into a person’s room or they’re exclusively selling real things, it might be easier for them to get caught.
So people sell fakes to obfuscate the real artifacts they’re selling.
Exactly. And if they’re saying everything’s real, they can also sell fakes at the same price they’re selling real items. People are still dropping hundreds to thousands of dollars on a shabti that cost them $2 to make. And so you’re funding that whole process.
In your view, is there something that the broader community of interest—be it law enforcement, multilateral bodies, or archaeologists—should be doing to combat antiquities trafficking?
A big part of it would be more of the public reporting stuff. A lot of people will come across stuff on eBay or Facebook or something, and you are well within your rights to report that. And I highly suggest doing that. Or if you’re in New York and someone is trying to sell you antiquities with a questionable provenance, you can report that to the DA.
But if we get more people educated on why this is problematic, if we get more people educated on the fact that this is extremely harmful not just to the field of archaeology but also to the people who very much live in the country today, that may help in the long run—purchasing a shabti isn’t just affecting world culture, it’s affecting people on the ground. I think if we educate people on that too, maybe, we’ll get more people to actually care about it. I think Gen Z is amazing in terms of this type of stuff, and the other generations maybe need a little bit more work. All you have to do is look under any Facebook post about the British Museum repatriating anything, and you can see that people are extremely under educated on why these things are important, on what and who they impact. I mean, it’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of work that has to be done.
But I have to say, the Egyptian government does a great job in terms of making this stuff very clear, making it very public when they find trafficked antiquities and using it as a celebratory thing, which I think is the best way to posit this to the general public. Because it is a success when they find 5,000 items and they can bring them home. And the more that we paint it in that way to people, the less they’ll be upset about it. To a certain degree we’re still combatting colonialism and orientalism in these issues, but I can be optimistic!
So we should educate ourselves and become citizen sleuths.
Exactly. And don’t be afraid to report something. There’s people whose job it is to go through this stuff, and you’re not bothering them by reporting it. It would be great if there was a whole—and maybe there is and I just don’t know about it—but if there was a whole web sleuth network about illegal antiquities and reporting them so they can go home. That would be amazing. Because the specialists can’t have their eyes on everything at the same time. And also, if they’re interested, following people like Donna Yates, an expert on art and antiquities crime on Twitter, and supporting their work, or just educating yourself with their work. They make it very accessible to the general public. That’s another great way to be aware. Don’t purposefully put your head in the sand about these problems.
Words to live by! Thank you so much, Emily.
You can find Emily on Twitter @ESmithSangster. If you would like to educate yourself on antiquities trafficking, here are some resources:
Stealing From History: Inside the Multimillion-Dollar Illegal Trade in Artefacts from the Middle East [National News Weekend]
The Greatest Clash in Egyptian Archaeology May Be Fading, But Anger Lives On [Smithsonian Magazine]
Twitter feeds:
Erin L. Thompson, Associate Professor of Art Crime at CUNY, @artcrimeprof
Donna Yates, Associate Professor of Criminology at Maastricht University, @drdonnayates
Peter B. Campbell, Lecturer in Cultural Heritage Under Threat, Cranfield University @peterbcampbell
Emily says, “I love telling my students that story, because everyone in the room is always like, isn’t that cannibalism? And I’m like, yes! You’ve hit the nail right on the head! Thank you, you got there, because apparently the Victorians didn’t put two and two together. These were humans, let’s not eat them.”
Tetisheri was a royal matriarch and queen consort in the late 17th/early 18th dynasties, at the dawn of Egypt’s New Kingdom.
According to ArtNews, the curators were charged in France with “complicity of gang fraud and laundering.” One is accused of receiving payments from two art gallery owners who have “repeatedly been subject to police investigation in connection with illicit artifacts.”
In 1970, the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization adopted a convention to prohibit international trafficking of cultural property. You can read more here: https://en.unesco.org/fighttrafficking/1970
“The partage system officially ceased in the 1980s, when Egypt passed its 1983 antiquities law.” https://ncartmuseum.org/golden-mummies-reckoning-with-colonialism-and-racism-in-egyptology/
Looting of artifacts in Egypt increased during the 2011 Arab Spring uprising. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-12442863
A funerary figurine, usually in the likeness of a mummy.
This is WILD!!! That invitation for the unwrapping party alone, OMG, not to mention the casual cannibalism 😱 I’ve got to go back and read this again, Sam, brilliant interview!
Wow! I'm going to save this to read again, it's so packed with interesting info, thank you!