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Ka Nefer Nefer and the SLAM-Promoted Collecting History (II) The Mysterious Mr Mathez

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St. Louis Art Museum attorney David Linenbroker said the museum does not "have any interest in possessing a stolen object" and "We're confident we're the rightful owner". He adds: "We've been facing all this innuendo for years".

Well, it has gone a little beyond "innuendo".

The article 'Out of Egypt' (Wednesday, Feb 15 2006) details what journalist  Malcolm Gay determined six years ago had been claimed by the dealer and the St Louis Art Museum as the artefact's collecting history after it was excavated in 1952:
According to documents the seller supplied to the St. Louis museum, the mask was seen in 1952 at an antiquities dealer in Brussels, Belgium.  Roughly ten years later, the provenance says, the object was bought by a private collector and then sold to an unnamed Swiss citizen, in whose private collection it would remain for 40 years. In 1997 the mask was purchased for an undisclosed sum by Phoenix Ancient Art, which sold it one year later to the Saint Louis Art Museum for $499,000.The provenance bases the mask's Belgium stopover on the eyewitness declaration of a Swiss man named Charly Mathez, who in 1997 attested that he'd seen the Ka-Nefer-Nefer at a Brussels gallery 45 years earlier.
"I confirm that I saw this Egyptian piece...in an important antiquities dealership in Brussels, Belgium in 1952," reads Mathez's handwritten declaration, dated February 11, 1997. The declaration, written in French, continues: "I remember this date very well because I often traveled to Belgium on business during this time, and this piece interested one of my clients."
After buying the mask, Saint Louis Art Museum officials contacted Mathez in the hope that he might provide additional information that would bolster the provenance. "It's been a long time," Mathez replied in a letter dated October 5, 1999, conceding that he could not recall the name of the Brussels gallery and apologizing that he could be of no further assistance.
"He is a person who told us that he was in Brussels on business quite a lot in the 1950s. That's what we know," says [SLAM Director]  Benjamin. "But we do have an address for him, and he wrote back to us directly."
How had Phoenix Ancient Art known to contact Mathez in the first place? "The relationship between the two? I don't know," says Benjamin, who came to the museum a year after the mask's purchase. "I'm not aware that that particular question was asked."
Hicham Aboutaam, who now runs Phoenix Ancient Art with his brother Ali, doesn't know either. "I really don't know [who Charly Mathez is]," Aboutaam says from his New York gallery. "I'd have to look at those documents. It's been, what, eight years now?"
Well, now many more years have passed and very little information has come to light about these circumstances. There is no evidence that Mr Aboutaam actually did dig out the documents underpinning a half-million dollar deal done just a few years previously. We still know nothing more about this mysterious Swiss citizen Charly Mathez, and about his claim that the object was already in Brussels as early as 1952. The problem here for SLAM is that this does not tally with what Judge Autrey states in his opinion rejecting the US government's claims. Even this hyper-sceptical judge states that he accepts (as the basis for further discussion):
the Mask was excavated at Saqqara, Eqypt, in 1952, placed in storage in Saqqara following its excavation where it remained until 1959, and then was “packed for shipping” to Cairo, Egypt, in preparation for an exhibit in Tokyo,Japan. The complaint further states that the Mask was “received by police guards” in Cairo in July of 1959, but instead of traveling to Tokyo, it remained in Cairo until 1962 when it was transferred back to Saqqara. The verified complaint further states that the Mask was removed from Saqqara in 1966 and “traveled” to Cairo in “box number fifty-four,” the “last documented location of the Mask in Egypt.” The complaint then goes on to state that in 1973, an inventory was taken of box number fifty-four, whereupon it was discovered the Mask was “missing.” The complaint states, “The register did not document that the Mask was sold or given to a private party during the time frame of 1966 to 1973.”
Placing these two accounts together, we find that a claim is made that in 1952 the same object was both in a Brussels showroom as well as being in Saqqara when exhibits were being packed for a Tokyo exhibition. Now I think it hardly likely that the Egyptians would have packed the wrong mummy mask in 1959 - they had a register with photos showing what it looked like. It was verified as being in that box in 1966. So Mr Charly Mathez was either very much mistaken about which female nineteenth century mummy mask he saw, or he is telling a lie.

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