Auction season is in full swing and while waiting for the Crosby-Schøyen Codex to go on sale for a projected stellar price, a more affordable offer of a deaccessioned Egypt Exploration Fund distribution papyrus is available at Forum Auctions.
The papyrus, P.Oxy. XIV 1767 in technical terminology, was given to Ampleforth Abbey Library in York, but the institution at some point sold it through the market – I don’t know exactly when and how but surely it was offered by London Sotheby’s on December 7, 2010. Those were the glorious days when the Green family appeared on the collecting scene throwing money anywhere the words “Bible” and “Christian” were mentioned. Sotheby’s curators tried the Christian connection in this case too, as you can gather from the catalogue entry, but despite the effort the papyrus sold for just £6000. To give you comparative prices, consider that four years later five papyri, distributed back in the days by the Egypt Exploration Fund to the Pacific School of Religion/Badè Museum, were privately sold through a bookseller at a much higher price, ca. $150,000, and none of them were of Christian content. (I covered part of this disgraceful story in 2016). In 2020 the same papyri were again on offer, even more discretely directly to booksellers, at an undisclosed price by someone named “Alan”. (If you’re curious, my book will be out this September with more details on this and other stories).
All these ex-Egypt Exploration Fund distribution papyri are licit, meaning that they were exported with licenses from Egypt when it was legal and their title of ownership passed through different institutions and people legally. But what about the ethical aspects of these dealings? A lot has been said and written about this: deaccessions of the society’s papyri and other antiquities defeat the gift mandate to be good custodians, and academics should not be involved at all in this kind of business, as explained in various professional association policies and hopefully in university ethical statements too.
And what about the traders? Dealers and auction houses, individually and as members of professional associations, could do certainly better. For instance, they could finally start producing catalogues with full and documented provenance of what they sell. They can also encourage conversations between sellers, collectors and institutions, so that objects might find a loving and caring home, as library and museum associations recommend too.
But looking at what is still happening after a decade of campaigning, I do wonder if there is any interest to improve practices. Not to mention legislations.
For more on these issues I suggest the following open access readings, with further bibliography:
Alice Stevenson, Scattered Finds: Archaeology, Egyptology and Museums, London: UCL 2019.
Roberta Mazza, Papyri, Ethics, and Economics: A Biography of P.Oxy. 15.1780 (𝔓39), Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 52 (2015), 113-142.
Brent Nongbri, “The Ethics of Publication: Papyrology,” Bryn Mawr Classical Review 25 May 2022, https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2022/2022.05.25/
Usama Gad, “Decolonizing the Troubled Archive of Papyri and Papyrology in a Global Digital Age: A View from Contemporary Egypt,” in Garrick V. Allen, Usama Gad, Kelsie Rodenbiker, Anthony Royle, and Jill Unkel (eds.), The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri at Ninety: Literature, Papyrology, Ethics, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2022.
Roberta Mazza 