Bringing Collectors (and Their Collections) Out of Hiding
At the end of the late Nahman Avigad’s magisterial Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Sealsa appear a number of indices and lists that are not only helpful to scholars but also interesting to thumb through at odd moments. Leafing through the book recently, I came upon one that particularly fascinated me. It is a list of seals that are pictured and discussed in the corpus but that are now lost—or at least lost to us. We simply don’t know where they are! We have only pictures.
This corpus represents the lifework of the late Nahman Avigad. When he was not excavating in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter, he traveled from collection to collection, indeed from country to country, searching for ancient stamp seals and seal impressions bearing inscriptions in Hebrew and other West Semitic languages. In all, he and Benjamin Sass, who updated and completed the work, catalogued 1,217 seals and impressions. By my count, 257 are listed in the category “Lost or Present Location Not Reported.” That’s more than 20 percent. In other words, more than one in five of the known seals is missing and can only be seen in mostly old pictures.
I can’t help but wonder how much of this is the result of the way some members of the scholarly community treat collectors and dealers—as low-life pariahs who should be shunned and shamed. In a word (or two), this attitude is foolish and counterproductive. Collectors who possess these seals—regardless of where they came from or how they got there—should be invited to share their treasures with scholars and with the public at large. These collectors should be encouraged eventually to leave their precious artifacts to a museum or a university. But instead, collectors are being humiliated into hiding.
Not long ago, I proposed to a prominent collector that he donate $50,000 to the Biblical Archaeology Society to fund the establishment of a registry of seals in memory of Professor Avigad, the universally recognized dean of Israeli epigraphists and seal experts. The collector did not respond positively to my suggestion. I wonder if there is someone else out there who would be willing to fund this project? How many seals are in private collections whose existence is unknown even to scholars? We have seen how important seals and bullae have recently begun to surface, owing in part to a few leading scholars who have been willing to buck their colleagues (particularly in the Archaeological Institute of America) and publish these artifacts despite their lack of provenance. The most recent of these is the impression of the seal of King Hezekiah, published by Frank Moore Cross in our March/April 1999 issue (see “King Hezekiah’s Seal Bears Phoenician Imagery,” BAR 25:02). BAR has been more than receptive to publishing these extraordinary finds. We like to think we are part of the reason they have surfaced.
In the registry we propose, collectors could list their seals and bullae anonymously, if they wished, but in such a way that we could contact them later. We would assure them that they would be honored, not disparaged. In time, they might be willing to allow their artifacts to be exhibited. Eventually, they might even leave them to a public institution. Who knows what treasures would surface? We would be pleased to hear from collectors, dealers, museums, philanthropists and just ordinary readers as to how to further this project.
One collection of seals listed in the Avigad corpus especially intrigues me. It belonged to a well-known Paris collector who died several years ago. His name was Paul Altman. Whether by will or by the generosity of Altman’s heirs, the Israel Museum was permitted to choose ten seals from the collection. The remainder—some 68 seals—was retained by the family. No one knows what happened to them. Moreover, no one seems to know where the family is or even who they are. Altman was apparently divorced but had several children. I have tried to find the family through connections in Paris but have been unsuccessful. Is there anyone out there who can help us locate the family of Paul Altman? Otherwise, these seals may be lost to the world forever.
I’ll end with another story—about how publication in BAR sometimes brings forth important finds in private collections that no one knows about. In 1996 P. Kyle McCarter, the William F. Albright Professor of Biblical and Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, published an article in BAR discussing some inscribed arrowheads in private collections.b Dating to the 11th century B.C., they are inscribed with the name of the owner (arrow of so-and-so) and often his father’s name and sometimes a title. (One belonged to a king of Amurru, whose people are later referred to in the Bible as Amorites.) Perhaps the arrows were intended not for use in battle but as a warrior’s proud symbol, like a shirt with your initials on it or a badge denoting membership in a military guild. If they were actually shot in battle, they may have been used to identify an archer when the fighting was over and it was time to divide the spoil.
The arrowheads tell us a lot about the political situation at the time and are significant in tracing the development of alphabetic writing. The ones discussed in McCarter’s article brought the total number of known inscribed arrowheads to 32. As a result of McCarter’s article, however, two more have come to light and a third has resurfaced. A reader from New York, having seen BAR’s coverage, asked McCarter to decipher two arrowheads in her collection, and a Massachusetts doctor sent McCarter a third to examine. Two are shown here for the first time (at left). We hope the publication of these arrowheads and seals will encourage more and more collectors to make their collections available to us all—to learn from and enjoy.
Over the Transom: Three More Arrowheads
By P. Kyle McCarter Jr.
Robin F. Beningson of New York thought the arrowheads she had seen pictured in a review I wrote for BAR looked familiar.1 She believed she had two just like them, but so far she had been unsuccessful in finding someone who could explain them to her and evaluate their significance. She wrote and asked me, Would I be interested in seeing them? I responded with enthusiasm, and Ms. Beningson sent the arrowheads to me at Johns Hopkins for study.
A preliminary examination showed that Ms. Beningson was correct: Her two projectile points (photos below) clearly belonged to the small corpus of alphabetically inscribed bronze arrowheads I had discussed in BAR, and there was nothing about them or their inscriptions that might call their authenticity into question. This meant that the total number of known examples of these artifacts had now increased from 32 to 34. This was a significant increase in this important corpus, and it would not have happened without the cooperation of the collectors who gave permission to Robert Deutsch and Michael Heltzer to publish their five arrowheads;2 BAR, which brought the arrowheads and their significance to international attention; and Ms. Beningson, who alertly recognized what she had and was willing to share it with the scholarly community. Several other examples have since come to light, primarily through further publication by Deutsch and Heltzer of objects held in private collections, so that the total corpus now approaches 50.
These inscribed arrowheads represent an unusual and little-known category of artifacts. Yet, as I stressed in my review, they shed considerable light on the early history of the alphabet.
During my first careful examination of the Beningson arrowheads, I noted a number of interesting features, some unprecedented in the corpus of inscribed arrowheads. For example, while the script of the smaller arrowhead (upper photo) fits squarely into the middle of the eleventh century B.C.E., the period to which the largest number of these inscribed arrowheads belong, the script of the larger arrowhead (lower photo) shows that it belongs to the end of the eleventh or, more probably, the beginning of the tenth century B.C.E. If this is correct, it is the least archaic arrowhead in the entire known corpus.
The interpretation of the archaic text of the two arrowheads also presented a few surprises, but here I was hampered by surface corrosion that obscured the reading in places, especially on the smaller arrowhead. This difficulty led to the next episode in the story of the recovery and interpretation of these important artifacts.
After consulting with experts at Johns Hopkins, I sought the assistance of Dr. R. Thomas Chase, an authority on ancient bronzes, who at that time (June 1996) was the director of the conservation laboratory at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., a division of the Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Chase took a special interest in the project and was very generous with his time and resources, and even made the scientific instruments in his laboratory available for analysis of the arrowheads. With the permission of Ms. Beningson, we performed three tests on the arrowheads. First, we examined them under very high magnification. Second, Dr. Chase carried out a spectrographic analysis, which identifies the elements the bronze is composed of (both arrowheads proved to be primarily copper alloyed with a significant amount of tin). Third, Dr. Chase X-rayed the two arrowheads. These procedures, especially the first and third, were extremely useful to me in my attempt to decipher the inscribed texts. The X rays, for example, not only penetrated beneath the surface corrosion on the arrowheads but also eliminated most incidental scratches, ancient and modern, and exposed the original engraving in remarkably clear form. The tests performed by Dr. Chase also yielded many kinds of information that I was not specifically seeking and taught me the potential this kind of laboratory analysis has for increasing the information we can derive from the study of ancient inscriptions. To cite only one example, during our microscopic examination of the larger of the two arrowheads, Dr. Chase, with his practiced eye, was able to determine that the inscription had been incised with a steel engraving tool, and this observation has significance for the state of metallurgy in the Levant at the beginning of the first millennium B.C.E.
With the scientific tests completed, I was able to decipher the inscriptions fully.
The smaller of the Beningson arrowheads (measuring 3 inches long) belonged to “Yattar
In the meantime, a third arrowhead had been sent to me by another collector and BAR reader, Robert L. Van Uitert of Williamstown, Massachusetts. Like Ms. Beningson, Dr. Van Uitert generously gave me permission to study his arrowhead and subject it to laboratory analysis. After a preliminary examination of the Van Uitert arrowhead, however, I was suspicious of its authenticity. The surface looked unnaturally smooth, exhibiting almost no natural surface corrosion on the inscribed part of the blade. Even more troubling was the fact that I recognized the arrowhead! It was identical in every detail to one that had been published in a second volume by Deutsch and Heltzer,3 who indicated that it belonged to an “anonymous collector.” This collector could not have been Dr. Van Uitert himself, since he had acquired the arrowhead very recently, after the publication of Deutsch and Heltzer’s book. I feared that I would have to tell Dr. Van Uitert that he had been sold a forgery, a modern cast made from a mold taken from the original in the possession of the “anonymous collector.” Nevertheless, I returned to the Freer Gallery, and again Dr. Chase patiently conducted the same battery of tests that he had run on the Beningson arrowheads. To my pleasant surprise (and initial confusion), the tests showed the Van Uitert arrowhead to be authentic and ancient. Microscopic examination found corroded material deep inside the grooves of the incised inscription. The unnatural smoothness of the surface was probably the result of a modern antiquity dealer’s attempt to clean the surface with something like steel wool in order to make the inscription more visible to a potential buyer. I discussed this mystery with Dr. Van Uitert, and after a brief investigation, he was able to determine that the dealer from whom he purchased the arrowhead was in fact the “anonymous collector” cited by Deutsch and Heltzer. The Van Uitert arrowhead is, in short, perfectly authentic, and its inscription indicates that it was “The arrowhead of ’Ah
But it has already been published by Deutsch and Heltzer.
MLA Citation
Footnotes
Nahman Avigad, Corpus of West Semitic Seals, revised and completed by Benjamin Sass (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities/Israel Exploration Society/Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, 1997). This clothbound book is available for $92.00 (including shipping) from the Biblical Archaeology Society by calling toll-free 1–800-221–4644.
See P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., “In Private Hands: Pieces of the Puzzle,” BAR 22:02.