The Forum

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A Teenage Call to Arms

We 16 students at Sacred Heart Preparatory School have just finished a fall semester honors project, in which we produced a booklet on the problem of archaeological looting. As your editorial points out (Hershel Shanks, “Protecting Archaeological Sites,” AO 05:01), national and international laws that are supposed to curtail illegal trade in antiquities don’t work because they are inadequately enforced, if enforced at all. Poor countries cannot afford to police every site; and even where the security apparatus exists, those who should be guarding the store are all too often doing the stealing.

Our seminar concluded: “We must raise the level of awareness about what a dire situation this is. The best way to do this is through publicity—every object that is looted, every theft that takes place or is thwarted, every object that is repatriated … And finally, we must provide better education about the seriousness of the problem and create a core of concerned and dedicated individuals for whom cultural heritage is more valuable than any art collection.”

We wholeheartedly support your call for a professional conference on the issue of protecting archaeological sites.

Black Market Means Violence

Hershel Shanks’s article on Italy’s archaeology police (“Italy’s Top Antiquities Cops Fight Back,” AO 05:01) raises a puzzling issue. Why would such obviously intelligent men oppose such an obviously intelligent solution (the free market) to protect archaeological treasures?

Every society decides to exclude certain commodities from the legal protection of the free market, which forces these commodities into the black market. In the United States, for example, we trade flaxseed and aspirin in the free market, but hemp and heroin are relegated to the black market.

Italy and other countries have banished trade in archaeological treasures to the black market. Trade in black market commodities is similar to legal trade—both involve recognized ownership, protection from theft and commercial networks. Free market commodities, however, are protected by a centuries-old legal structure called “property rights,” which are backed up by police, lawyers, judges and appeals courts. Black market commodities have none of these protections. If a black marketer is robbed or cheated, the issue must be settled by force. Black marketers thus try to reduce the “blood cost” by dividing the territory—allowing a family, clan or organization to be sovereign in one area and to settle disputes.

This may explain why the Italian police are not really interested in 010dealing with looters. The looters are part of a well-defined black market that the police might be unwise to disrupt.

This is the great irony of the decision to relegate archaeological treasures to the black market. Only the free market can produce the open, honest, transparent ownership system that scholarship requires. The black market will produce plenty of artifacts, but all in the dark. Scholars who insist that archaeological treasures must be traded only in the black market are making it more difficult to serve their discipline.

Nomads?

In “Nawamis of Sinai: Exploring 5,000-Year-Old Desert Tombs,” AO 05:01, author Avner Goren refers to the people who built the Sinai’s stone tumuli as “nomads.” This word implies that they were continually on the move. In fact, the nawamis-builders were pastoralists who depended on herds of animals for food. Pastoralists are not always on the move; rather, they are transhumant, meaning that they usually have regular places to take their animals to feed and drink.

Political Taffy-Pulling?

I was disturbed by your publication’s apparent complicity in propagating a bit of patently transparent political taffy-pulling. Avner Goren would have us believe that in the early 1970s “hundreds of tourists” were overwhelming the Ein Huderah site in a remote part of the Sinai, which was then occupied by Israel. Because of the threat posed by visitors, he says, “A salvage dig was needed.”

Even if there were a few tourists, does anybody on this planet really believe that the Israeli military could not have protected the site? And why, exactly, was a salvage dig needed? Whatever was buried in the Ein Huderah nawamis had already been there for millennia! The obvious fact is that the Israeli archaeologists hurriedly organized a dig at the site because they knew Israel would soon be obligated to relinquish control of the Egyptian Sinai, putting an end to Israeli archaeological activity there.

Hence, a dig was not “needed,” but rather a dig was “possible.”

Was Midas a Spendthrift?

G. Kenneth Sams suggests that the largest tumulus at Gordion was the tomb of King Midas “King Midas: From Myth to Reality,” AO 04:06.

This seems unlikely, especially if one accepts Strabo’s report that Midas was king at the time of Gordion’s destruction. Surely the destruction would have significantly depleted resources, making investment in so large a tumulus unfeasible. And if the tumulus was constructed before the destruction, it hardly seems likely that the survivors would have thus honored a king who presided over their defeat.

Governments are famous for making their most dramatic expenditures just before an economic or military collapse. Often, in fact, ever-increasing government expenditures destroy the nation’s economic base. Therefore, one might expect the largest tumulus at Gordion to have been constructed shortly before the Cimmerian conquest. Is it possible that Midas himself, through lavish spending, placed an excessive load on the Phrygian economy—severely weakening Gordion and leaving it susceptible to invasion? Perhaps the “golden touch” story began as a political lampoon, as have so many modern nursery rhymes.

Apologies to Nefertiti

In “Warriors of Hatti: The Rise and Fall of the Hittites,” AO 05:01, by Eric Cline, the quartz-sandstone head depicts Nefertiti (above), the wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten. It is not a 011portrait of Ankhesenamun, the wife of Tutankhamun.

Mr. Parchin is correct; the lovely carving is a depiction of Nefertiti. We apologize for the error.—Ed.

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A Teenage Call to Arms