November!!!

Welcome to November, the Thanksgiving month in the US. Originally the ninth month in the roman calendar, November, like the other months, was originally planned by moon cycles. Cool, right? You know what else is cool? The power of the internet, specifically of a celebrity selfie in this case. It wasn't Ye this time, but his soon to be ex-wife Kim Kardashian West's photo at the 2018 Met Gala that led to the recovery of the stolen coffin of Nedjemankh.

How did we get here? Well, long story short Nedjemankh's coffin was stolen during a revolution and sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with fake documents at some point in 2011. At a whopping $4 dollars the thieves did not leave empty handed. As everything Kardashian goes, of course the photo went viral in 2018 and the Manhattan Assistant District Attorney at the time was notified by an anonymous source that the coffin had in fact been stolen following an unpaid dig 7 years prior. So what happened? Apparently after looters dug up the tomb in 2011, the coffin was sent to an antiquities dealer in 2013. The dealer mislabeled the coffin to cover up its origins and sold it to the Dionysos Gallery in Hamburg, Germany. The Gallery then constructed a restoration of the tomb and faked an export license claiming that the coffin had been exported in 1971. The coffin was then shipped to a French antiquities dealer who then sold it to the Met.

Needless to say, the chain was discovered and everyone involved was found after the return of the coffin and arrested. In case you did not know, antiquities beat out bodies/body parts in the black market with drugs and arms (as in firearms) being the two most profitable. That's right - antiquities is #3. So why is it not as widely spoken about? There are a variety of reasons but more than likely it is because it typically does not affect persons lives in the same way that drug trade or arms trade or even the organ or human trafficking. Not directly, anyway. Indirectly, the black market for antiquities pays for other activities that do impact lives, but just being the funding it is hard to relate as a direct issue.

So what is being done to combat this illegal trade? At this particular point not much. Interpol did recover around 19,000 artifacts last year from a ring that spanned 100 countries. Afghan customers seized almost 1,000 cultural objects at the Kabul airport, the Argentine police seized 2,500 ancient coins, Latvian police recovered another large amount of ancient coins and Spanish police arrested a few people in connection with the trafficking of Colombian artifacts. While the volume of arrests is quite impressive, the punishments for such actions have not changed nor have the methods to catch such scams.

We have covered bone and body trade before, but illegal antiquities trade is just as real and just as harmful. In this case, a picture spoke a thousand words, so next time maybe post that selfie to whatever social media platform as you may be helping a country reunite with a long lost artifact.