Egypt
New York Times (William J. Broad)
Thanks very much to lovely David Petersen for this link.
- Museums Should Dig In
The New York Times (Bernard Frischer) THIS [last] year saw the end of the five-year-long trial here of Marion True, a former antiquities curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The case against her — for the purchase of art allegedly looted...
- Repatriation: Finders Keepers?
New York Times (John Tierney) I rather like the picture of the Egyptian statue with suitcases. Zahi Hawass regards the Rosetta Stone, like so much else, as stolen property languishing in exile. “We own that stone,” he told Al Jazeera, speaking as...
- Ebay Has Chilling Effect On Looting Of Antiquities
Science Daily Having worked for 25 years at fragile archaeological sites in Peru, UCLA archaeologist Charles "Chip" Stanish held his breath when the online auction house eBay launched more than a decade ago. "My greatest fear was that the Internet would...
- Giza - Research Into Meteorites And Geoglyphs
http://tinyurl.com/27b86e (en.naukawpolsce.pl)"Samples of rock and fragments of pyramid walls brought from Egypt are being examined at the AGH University of Science and Technology. It is very likely that meteorites had dropped near the pyramids. The material...
- Focus In Getty Trial Shifts
http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/04/27/arts/27gett.htmlFor those of you following the Getty Trial, which has rammifications for the entire archaeological/museum world, the above provides the latest details: "Dozens of documents were dissected in a courtroom...
Egypt
Black-Market Trinkets From Space
New York Times (William J. Broad)
Thanks very much to lovely David Petersen for this link.
Ebay and other Web sites pulse with hundreds of sales pitches. “The pieces below have an exceptional patina,” a site called Star-bits.com said of 10 pictured fragments.
The ads are for chunks of meteorites, bits of asteroids that have fallen from the sky and are as prized by scientists as they are by collectors. As more meteorites have been discovered in recent years, interest in them has flourished and an illegal sales market has boomed — much to the dismay of the people who want to study them and the countries that consider them national treasures.
“It’s a black market,” said Ralph P. Harvey, a geologist at Case Western Reserve University who directs the federal search for meteorites in Antarctica. “It’s as organized as any drug trade and just as illegal.”
The discovery of a rich and historically significant meteorite crater in southern Egypt, just north of the Sudanese border, has shown the voracious appetite for new fragments. Just as scientists appeared to be on the cusp of decrypting the evidence to solve an ancient puzzle, looters plundered the desolate site, and the political chaos in Egypt seems to ensure that the scientists will not be going back anytime soon.
- Museums Should Dig In
The New York Times (Bernard Frischer) THIS [last] year saw the end of the five-year-long trial here of Marion True, a former antiquities curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The case against her — for the purchase of art allegedly looted...
- Repatriation: Finders Keepers?
New York Times (John Tierney) I rather like the picture of the Egyptian statue with suitcases. Zahi Hawass regards the Rosetta Stone, like so much else, as stolen property languishing in exile. “We own that stone,” he told Al Jazeera, speaking as...
- Ebay Has Chilling Effect On Looting Of Antiquities
Science Daily Having worked for 25 years at fragile archaeological sites in Peru, UCLA archaeologist Charles "Chip" Stanish held his breath when the online auction house eBay launched more than a decade ago. "My greatest fear was that the Internet would...
- Giza - Research Into Meteorites And Geoglyphs
http://tinyurl.com/27b86e (en.naukawpolsce.pl)"Samples of rock and fragments of pyramid walls brought from Egypt are being examined at the AGH University of Science and Technology. It is very likely that meteorites had dropped near the pyramids. The material...
- Focus In Getty Trial Shifts
http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/04/27/arts/27gett.htmlFor those of you following the Getty Trial, which has rammifications for the entire archaeological/museum world, the above provides the latest details: "Dozens of documents were dissected in a courtroom...