New York justice seized, on June 2, five Egyptian pieces in possession of the prestigious Metropolitan Museum in New York but potentially from looting. The Manhattan prosecutor’s office confirms that this is a new development of the investigation carried out in Paris on antiquities trafficking involving the former boss of the Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez.
Scene from the Book of Exodus
According to a court document obtained by AFP, a New York State Supreme Court judge on May 19 ordered the seizure of these five antiquities, including a funeral portrait of a woman dated from 1954 to AD 68, worth approximately $1.2 million, and a group of five painted linen fragments depicting a scene from the Book of Exodus, dated between 250 and 450 BC- C., valued at $1.6 million. The Art Newspaper site, which revealed the information, adds that the five pieces were purchased between 2013 and 2015 by the Met Museum in New York.
Funeral portrait of a woman dated AD 54-68, worth approximately $1.2 million © Handout / Supreme Court of the State of New York / AFP
The investigators also specify that the portrait, as well as the fragments, would have been acquired at an auction in Paris and that one of the experts who guaranteed the origin of these objects is also the subject of a investigation.
Subtle sarcophagus
In Paris, the authorities are trying to establish whether, among the hundreds of pieces looted during the Arab Spring in several countries of the Near and Middle East, some were acquired by Louvre Abu Dhabi. Several of the accused protagonists, including the owner of a gallery in Hamburg, the German-Lebanese art dealer Roben Dib, remanded in custody by the French justice, are also involved in the sale of the sarcophagus to the Met Museum, according to a report of 2019 from the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
For the time being, the New York museum is content to refer to a previous statement in which he said he was “victim of an international criminal organization” and ensures “cooperation” with the authorities. In 2019, the Met had already returned to Egypt a golden sarcophagus which it had purchased in 2017 but which, following an investigation by the Antiquities Trafficking Department of the New York Prosecutor’s Office York, turned out to have been stolen in 2011, in the midst of revolutionary upheaval in this country.
The museum then had to abruptly interrupt an exhibition devoted to this coffin made for Nedjemankh, priest of the ram-headed god Heryshef. Its management had apologized and pledged to improve the process followed when acquiring antiques.
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