The Forum

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An Egyptian Pharaoh in Spain?

One photograph in “Warriors, Wolves & Women: The Art of the Iberians,” AO 06:03, by Ricardo Olmos, especially intrigued me: the image of a seventh-century B.C. sphinx. The sphinx appears to be wearing the double crown of ancient Egyptian pharaohs. Nothing was mentioned in the text about this astonishing detail, so I’d like to know if, indeed, it is the double crown.

According to Ricardo Olmos, the bronze sphinx is indeed wearing the double crown of ancient Egypt. During the orientalizing period (c. 700–550 B.C.), the art of Iberia was heavily influenced by Near Eastern iconography. Phoenician traders in search of precious metals brought with them objects from Egypt and elsewhere, creating a new international artistic style on the peninsula.—Ed.

Apologies to the Bull!

The cover caption for Bicha de Balazote (May/June 2003) is not quite right. The Bicha has a human’s head and a bull’s body rather than a bull’s head and a human’s body. We don’t want to insult the bull.

A Fabulous Fraud

Ricardo Olmos provides a brief but useful account of what is—and what is not—known about the art of the Iberians, ancient inhabitants of part of modern Spain and Portugal. A sidebar to “Warriors, Wolves & Women: The Art of the Iberians,” AO 06:03 (“Is the Lovely Dama de Elche a Fake?”) notes that I am the author “of a controversial book” that has questioned the authenticity of one of the works described by Olmos—indeed, the best-known work of “Iberian” art.

According to the sidebar, I have been “roundly criticized in Spain, denounced by newspaper editorial writers and vilified by archaeologists and art historians.” That is all too true, for I have dared to question the authenticity of a national icon. The sidebar, however, does only partial justice to my arguments.

The Dama de Elche was “found” in August of 1897 on a farm owned by a local doctor who sold antiquities to Spanish museums. This gentleman then sold the bust to Pierre Paris, an agent of the Louvre. The sidebar fails to note that Paris had been invited to be in Elche—at the very moment the bust was fortuitously “discovered.”

Just a few months later, early in 1898, another statue was “found” in a completely amateur “excavation” not far from where the Dama had miraculously turned up. This statue, the Iberian Warrior with a Falcata, is a blatant forgery. It follows exactly a drawing of an Iberian fragment that had been published two years earlier. This is a fact that the Spaniards never mention.

Despite serious questions about its authenticity, the Iberian Warrior is now proudly displayed in the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid, alongside the Dama.

The sidebar mentions another of my arguments that the Dama is a fake: “[I]n two places … the sculpture has been chipped, but the surface remains white, unlike the gray surface of the rest of the statue … Why do they not have the same gray patina as the rest of the sculpture?”

Indeed, why not? Doesn’t this discrepancy call for some scientific analysis? Surely the Spanish 009authorities could easily demolish my unwelcome arguments by performing tests. Indeed, in 1995 the Spanish scholar José Manuel Gómez Tabanera called for a whole menu of tests to be performed on the dubious Dama, namely “laboratory analysis of the artistic medium, including the effects of absorption of local soils by the sandstone, spectrographic analysis of the remaining pigments, plus any other, new comparative approaches.”

The sidebar in Archaeology Odyssey further states that “the National Archaeological Museum is planning to conduct tests on the stone and its patina to help confirm the bust’s authenticity.” This is eight long years after Professor Tabanera, among others, called for the tests! In January 2000 I received a letter from the then-director of the museum saying that a team of scientific experts had been contracted to perform tests. Two years later, however, I received yet another letter from the new director (they don’t last long) saying that no such tests would likely ever be performed!

Unfortunately, Archaeology Odyssey has unwittingly contributed to the obfuscation by saying that tests are being planned, which does not seem to be true. I would recommend to the readers of this magazine that they look at my book, Art Forgery: The Case of the Lady of Elche (University of Florida, 1995), where they will find all the different sorts of evidence I have accumulated to demonstrate that the Dama is a fake.

Antonio Uriarte of the University of Madrid replies:

John F. Moffitt raises two points: the suspicious circumstances of the Dama’s discovery and the lack of scientific testing of the sculpture’s stone and pigments.

The fact that Pierre Paris was invited to Elche, where ancient works of art were indeed being found, does not mean the Dama is a fake. In later years, numerous Iberian sculptures turned up at Elche—and many of these were found in La Alcudia, the same spot where the Dama was discovered. One of them, the Iberian Warrior with a Falcata, is also branded a forgery by Moffitt. But Moffitt does not mention the sculptures excavated at La Alcudia in 1949 by the archaeologist Alejandro Ramos Folqués. Is it not strange that the two “forgeries” came from the very place where numerous architectural and sculptural Iberian remains were found half a century later?

Moffitt is correct that neither the stone nor the pigments of the Dama have been tested. Martín Almagro Gorbea, director of the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid in 1998, did ask that the Dama’s stone be analyzed, but his request was denied. The failure to honor his request was not a vast conspiracy on the part of the Spanish archaeological establishment to avoid unmasking a fake; rather, it probably had to do with bureaucratic inertia, or with fear of harming the sculpture without getting conclusive results.¹ On this, I agree with Moffitt that tests ought to be performed, if the statue can be protected and if the results could determine its authenticity. (Tests performed on other Iberian sculptures from Elche, for example, have shown that they are made of local limestone.²)

What Moffitt avoids discussing in his letter are the well-studied stylistic and iconographic aspects of the Dama.³ Decade by decade, research has reinforced the coherence of the Dama within the corpus of Iberian sculpture. The Dama was found more than a century ago, and many of its features, not then understood, have been confirmed by subsequent finds. For example, the use of paint in Iberian sculpture was unknown when the Dama appeared. Also, two recently excavated objects have much in common with the Dama. The Dama de Cabezo Lucero is very similarly adorned, with coils at both sides of the head.⁴ And the Varón de Baza, like the Dama, is a bust with a hole in its back, perhaps to serve as a receptacle for funerary cremations.⁵

What these and other studies show is how well the Dama de Elche fits into an environment of Iberian and classical Mediterranean sculpture.⁶ Her slight asymmetries are now known to be typical of Iberian sculpture.⁷ Her clothing and ornaments are absolutely in tune with other Iberian and Mediterranean objects and representations: the tiara, the hair band, the coils, the necklace.⁸

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All in all, Moffitt’s suspicions about the Dama de Elche suggest that the statue should be tested. But they come far short of proving that the Dama’s a fake.

An Egyptian Pharaoh in Spain? One photograph in “Warriors, Wolves & Women: The Art of the Iberians,” AO 06:03, by Ricardo Olmos, especially intrigued me: the image of a seventh-century B.C. sphinx. The sphinx appears to be wearing the double crown of ancient Egyptian pharaohs. Nothing was mentioned in the text about this astonishing detail, so I’d like to know if, indeed, it is the double crown. Richard Firsten Miami, Florida According to Ricardo Olmos, the bronze sphinx is indeed wearing the double crown of ancient Egypt. During the orientalizing period (c. 700–550 B.C.), the art of Iberia was […]