The Forum
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Alphabet Soup
Although I have an M.A. in historical preservation, serve on the Executive Board of the Wyoming State Historical Society and have a reasonable knowledge of history and archaeology, your use of C.E. and B.C.E. baffles me. You do not even use these designations uniformly throughout the magazine.
Laramie, Wyoming
Every now and then we do need to explain our policy concerning this (somewhat confusing) system of designating the eras. In recent decades many scholars have declined to use A.D. (Anno Domini) and B.C. (Before Christ) because of their religious implications; instead, they have chosen to use the neutral designations C.E. (Common Era) and B.C.E. (Before the Common Era)—which refer to exactly the same periods of time as do the older ones. Our policy is to use the older A.D./B.C. designations, but we allow authors their preference.—Ed.
Questioning the Taboos
In “Male Fantasies” (September/October 2003), Timothy McNiven writes that the erastes–eromenos “pairings ended when the youth reached adulthood.” Where does this assertion come from?
Also, McNiven writes, “Homosexual relations between adult men were strongly criticized.” By whom? I know of no classical source that says any such thing.
Wilton, Connecticut
Timothy McNiven replies:
I am always happy when a basic question makes me re-examine the evidence for commonly held opinions that we often treat like facts. In this case, however, I think the evidence supports my statement that a young man stopped being an eromenos when his beard grew in. For example, the sixth-century B.C.E. poet Theognis writes, “Boy, as long as your cheek is smooth, I’ll never / Stop praising you, not even if I have to die.” Similarly, at the beginning of Plato’s dialogue Protagoras, Socrates’s unnamed friend chides the philosopher for pursuing Alcibiades even though his beard is filling in. According to the scholar Gloria Ferrari, a young man at Sparta may have remained an eromenos until he was 30 (Figures of Speech: Men and Maidens in Ancient Greece [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003], pp. 131–133). At Athens, however, the growth of the beard would have meant an earlier change of status.
As for the taboo on adult male homosexuality, the classic case is that of the poet Agathon (late fifth to early fourth century B.C.E.), who as a youth became the eromenos of Pausanias and remained so into adulthood. In Aristophanes’s play Thesmophoriazousai [The Women at the Festival of Demeter], Agathon is lampooned for being clean-shaven, even though he is in his 20s. Although there were nuances and exceptions, the ancient Greeks frowned on homosexual relations between adult males (see Thomas K. Hubbard, ed., Homosexuality 010in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents (Berkeley: University of California, 2003).
Give Ramesses His Due!
On reading Jack Meinhardt’s very interesting and well-written account of Ramesses and his legacy (“‘Look on My Works!’ The Many Faces of Ramesses the Great,” September/October 2003), I was surprised by his rather harsh conclusion. He sums up the renowned pharaoh as a stupid braggart who left little more than a shattered visage, though he concedes that it “does seem to have something eternal about it.”
Certainly, Ramesses was exceedingly self-aggrandizing, as many ancient rulers were. (How else to explain the temples and tombs they left behind?) But a ruler who remained in power longer than any other in antiquity, who reconquered three territories previously lost from the kingdom, who ruled over a united Egypt for nearly 70 years, and who left behind such breathtaking creations as Hut Ramesses Meryamun (the temple at Abu Simbel) deserves a more generous assessment.
New York, New York
Jack Meinhardt replies:
Mr. Sporn interprets as a “harsh conclusion” what was intended as irony. The specific sentence in question runs: “He was Pharaoh, possibly, too dumb to recognize the power of Yahweh but smart enough not to make any mention of the Exodus in his annals.” I was alluding (perhaps somewhat enigmatically) to the fact that no one really knows whether Ramesses II is the Pharaoh of Exodus, and to the fact that few serious scholars believe that the Exodus took place exactly as described in the Bible.
Interestingly, the earliest archaeological reference to Israelites is on a stela erected by Ramesses’s son and successor, Merneptah (1213–1203 B.C.). The stela records that Pharaoh Merneptah conquered a people called Israel during a campaign in Canaan.
Cultural Property, Congress and the Courts
As you observe in a brief news item (“Frederick Schultz to the Pokey,” September/October 2003, p. 16), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the conviction last June of Frederick Schultz for dealing in smuggled Egyptian antiquities. The decision has profoundly troubling consequences for legitimate owners and importers of antiquities and other cultural objects, and places the legal doctrine under which Schultz was convicted squarely at odds with congressional policy regulating the importation of cultural property.
Schultz was convicted under the rule of US v. McClain, an infrequently used and controversial 1979 criminal case. McClain held that the knowing importation of cultural property subject to a clear declaration of ownership by a foreign nation was grounds for the criminal prosecution of the importer by the United States under the National Stolen Property Act. Schultz was thus convicted not for dealing in objects stolen from known archeological sites or museum inventories but for handling objects to which Egypt claimed non-possessory title under its 1983 “patrimony” law.
While McClain was being decided, Congress was considering the U.S. response to the 1970 UNESCO Convention, a multinational attempt to respond to the problem of archeological looting by regulating the international antiquities market. The U.S. was unwilling to give foreign nations a “blank check” to require the return of cultural property imported into the United States on the basis of a mere declaration of ownership. This concern was underscored when Congress passed the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act in 1983.
The Implementation Act was intended to be the centerpiece of U.S. policy on the importation of cultural property, reflecting the considered efforts of Congress to balance the competing interests of archaeologists, anthropologists, art dealers, collectors, museums, academics, the State and Justice Departments and the Customs Service. In order to balance these interests, the Implementation Act offers relief to foreign nations only in narrowly defined circumstances, and does not automatically enforce an applicant’s patrimony laws.
Thus the Implementation Act provides for the return of “stolen” cultural property only if the objects are “documented to have been stolen from the inventory” of a foreign museum or monument—a concept consistent with the ordinary meaning of the term “stolen.”
As to unprovenanced objects, a request by a foreign nation for U.S. import restrictions must be evaluated by an 11-person Cultural Property Advisory Committee, having a balanced composition representing dealers, archaeologists, museums and the public. Import restrictions may only be imposed prospectively on archaeological and ethnological materials that are “culturally significant,” “significantly rare” and not “common or repetitive.” Qualifying materials may be designated for import restrictions only if the Advisory Committee makes specified determinations designed to facilitate the broadest possible international exchange of cultural property consistent with the protection of important archeological sites and the national retention of significant objects.
Despite the Schultz court’s blithe assertions to the contrary, the McClain doctrine and the Implementation Act cannot concurrently govern the importation of unprovenanced cultural objects.
By affirming McClain, the court cast a cloud over title to every cultural object otherwise lawfully imported into the United States—including objects imported in compliance with the Implementation Act. For example, Americans can now be prosecuted even if they comply with “safe harbors” under the Implementation Act for objects imported with “satisfactory evidence” of export prior to the date of U.S. import restrictions, and for objects purchased in good faith by U.S. museums and thereafter published or exhibited.
Foreign nations now have no incentive to apply for import restrictions under the Implementation Act, thereby calling into question the continued role and utility of the Advisory Committee. What was the point in negotiating the extensive import restrictions granted to Italy in 2001 if Americans can now be prosecuted for handling objects that might have left Italy after 1909, the date of Italy’s earliest patrimony law? Why should 012Egypt apply for selective import restrictions under the Implementation Act when it can simply rely on the Justice Department and the Customs Service to police its 1983 law?
The Schultz decision undeniably converts the Implementation Act from the centerpiece of U.S. cultural policy into a sideshow. It is a classic example of judicial nullification of congressional intent. Congress should thus amend the Stolen Property Act to preclude prosecution for claims of theft based solely on non-possessory ownership under a foreign patrimony law. This would correct the philosophical and mechanical disconnects between the McClain doctrine and the Implementation Act and allow each to function as intended. Just such a bill was presciently introduced in 1981 by the late Senator Patrick Moynihan. Until and unless Congress does so, this important area of U.S. cultural policy will be regulated by the courts instead of by Congress.
New York, New York
William G. Pearlstein is a lawyer with the New York firm Golenbock, Eiseman, Assor, Bell & Peskoe, which filed an amicus curiae brief on behalf of seven dealer and trade groups with the U.S. Court of Appeals in US v. Schultz. Frederick Schultz has filed a petition requesting the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Second Circuit Court’s decision.—Ed.
An Earlier Biblical Census
In his recounting of counting (going back to the Romans), I am surprised that Clifford Ando (“Taking Count,” September/October 2003) did not include David’s numbering of the tribes as reported in 2 Samuel 24:1 and 1 Chronicles 21:1, as well as in Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities 7.13. In the version from Samuel, God inspired David to take the census; in Chronicles, on the other hand, it was Satan who “incited David to count the people.” Josephus tells us that God was unhappy because David neglected to collect the half shekel “as an offering to the Lord” in accordance with Exodus 30:12–13.
El Prado, New Mexico
Clifford Ando replies:
My point was that our census—the one that sends us scrambling every decade—derives from the Romans.
I would distinguish between the function of a census in populations defined genealogically and the function of a census in communities with widely distributed citizenship. In the former, counting yields a number; in the latter, counting often adjudicates questions of membership itself. The Roman census, which included the assembling of demographic information, to some extent determined who belonged within the empire. To be counted, as I said, was to count.
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Errata
On page 64 of the September/October 2003 issue, we incorrectly identified Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.) as living in the “first-century A.D.” We thank the several observant readers who pointed out this error.
Alphabet Soup
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