Date: New
Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Amenhotep
III
Material: Greywacke
Provenance: Unknown;
probably Thebes
Excavated: Smuggled
out of Egypt by Jonathan Tokeley-Parry
Status: Repatriated
in 2008
Perhaps
the most beautiful piece of the thousands
that Jonathan Tokeley-Parry smuggled out of
Egypt, with the help of Ali and Toutori Farag,
was this head of Amenhotep III, bought from
looters with the dirt still on it. To slip
the head past customs, Tokeley-Parry coated
the head in plastic and painted it to resemble
a cheap souvenir; to make it more palatable
to museums and collectors, he attached a tea-stained
paper label and claimed it had belonged to
a nonexistent “Thomas Alcock.” His
partner, Frederick Schultz, sold the head for
$1.2 million in 1993 to Gawain McKinley, who
then sold it to collector Robin Symes.
In 1997,
Tokeley-Parry was convicted of handling stolen
goods and sentenced to six years in
jail in the UK, of which he served three. He
later testified against his accomplice Schultz,
who was convicted in June 2002 of antiquities
trafficking and sentenced to 33 months in jail.
By the
time the SCA investigated the head, it had
became entangled in the legal dispute
between Symes and the estate of his partner
Michaelides. But with the aid of Mishcon de
Reya’s Karen Sanig, the SCA reached an
amicable settlement out of court, and the head
of Amenhotep III returned to Egypt in December
2008.
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Head of Amenhotep
III (SCA Archives) |
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