Date: New
Kingdom, Dynasty 19, ca. 1295-1186 BC
Material: plaster,
linen, resin, glass, wood, gold, and pigment
Provenance: Saqqara,
Sekhemkhet Enclosure, burial of Kanefernefer
Inscriptions: One
ancient inscription in ink on hand; later
removed.
Excavated
by: Mohammed Zakaria Goneim in
1951/52 for the Egyptian Antiquities Service
Publication: The
Buried Pyramid, (London, 1956), Plate LXVIII
Status: Currently
in the possession of: The St. Louis Art
Museum, St. Louis, Missouri, USA In
the early 1950's, Mohamed Zakaria Goneim
discovered the burial of a 19th Dynasty noblewoman
named Ka-nefer-nefer inside the 3rd Dynasty
enclosure of Sekhemkhet at Saqqara. In 1959,
Ka-nefer-nefer's funerary mask, along with
a number of other objects from Goneim's excavations,
was transported from the Saqqara storerooms
to the Cairo Museum en route to Tokyo for
inclusion in an exhibition that was never
mounted. It was returned Saqqara, and then
sent to the antiquities department conservation
lab attached to the Egyptian Museum in 1966.
In
1973, many of the objects from the burial
of Ka-nefer-nefer were registered at the
Egyptian Museum, Cairo. The mask was not
among these objects; since it was the most
important object in the assemblage, we can
infer that it was missing by that time.
In
1998, the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) purchased
this mask from Phoenix Ancient Art (owned
by the Abouttam brothers, who have since
been convicted on smuggling charges and sentenced
to jail time in Egypt) for nearly half a
million dollars. The provenance provided
to SLAM with the mask is poorly documented
and unconvincing; when coupled with SCA records,
it can be shown clearly to be false: SLAM
claims that the mask was given to Goneim
by the Egyptian government following his
discovery of it in 1952, and that the mask
was seen overseas in 1953. This is not possible:
Goneim, like any excavator working for the
Egyptian government, would never have been
awarded objects, and the SCA has clear documentation
that the mask was in Egypt until at least
1966. Other parts of the alleged provenance
can also be shown to be faulty, and it is
the contention of the SCA that SLAM did not
carry out due diligence before purchasing
the mask. The mask is clearly stolen property,
and must be returned to Egypt.
Anyone
wishing to help the SCA put pressure on SLAM
to return
the mask can write a letter supporting our
position to:
Dr.
Brent Benjamin, Director
St. Louis Art Museum
One Fine Arts Drive
Forest Park, St. Louis, MO 63110-1380
Telephone 314.721.0072
dzumwalt@slam.org
Gay,
Malcolm. "Out of Egypt," Riverfront
Times (February 15, 2006)
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The funerary mask of Kanefernefer (St. Louis Art
Museum) |
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