Written by Georgia Hoffmeister Thursday, 17 March 2011 22:59

US Government Orders The St Louis Art Museum To Return Egyptian Death Mask

St Louis, MO. (BBC).- The US government has stepped into a row over an ancient Egyptian death mask, ordering the St Louis Art Museum to hand over the artefact. Egypt claims the 3200-year-old mask of 19th Dynasty noblewoman, Ka-Nefer-Nefer, was stolen. The museum paid $500,000 (£310,000) for the mask in 1998 and has already sued the US government to try and block seizure of the object, stating they do not have enough evidence that it was stolen. However, the federal complaint says the government is "certain" the mask was stolen and has traced its path from its discovery by an Egyptian excavator in 1952. The Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities began its attempt to recover the piece in 2006, after discovering it had been purchased by the St. Louis museum. US Attorney Richard Callahan said the dispute was "unfortunate" and would be "resolved by the courts."

The United States Attorney’s Office has announced the filing of a complaint seeking the forfeiture of the Mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer and in addition to seeking the Mask’s forfeiture, applied for a pre-trial restraining order prohibiting the Museum from disposing of the Mask during the pendency of this lawsuit. The complaint alleges that the Mask is subject to forfeiture because certain circumstances establish that it was stolen property at the time it was imported into the United States. In 1952, Egyptian archaeologist Mohamed Zakaria Goneim, working for the Egyptian Antiquities Service, excavated the mat burial of a 19th Dynasty noblewoman named Ka-Nefer-Nefer inside the funerary enclosure of the 3rd Dynasty king Sekhemket at Saqqara. The Mask was placed in storage at Saqqara, where it was registered as the property of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, and where it remained until 1959. In July 1959, the Mask and four other items from Saqqara were packed for shipping to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in preparation for an exhibit in Tokyo. Ultimately, the Mask did not travel to Tokyo for the exhibit; it remained in Cairo until 1962, when it was transferred back to Saqqara. The last documented location of the Mask in Egypt was in 1966 at the Egyptian Antiquities Organization Restoration Lab in Cairo. In 1973, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo took an inventory of all the objects that traveled in 1966 from Saqqara to Cairo and discovered that the Mask was missing. The register does not document that the mask was sold or otherwise legally transferred to any private party prior to turning up missing in 1973. In 2006, the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities became aware that the Mask had been accessioned by the Saint Louis Art Museum for approximately $500,000 in 1998. Subsequently, the Secretary General for the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities sent letters and documentation to the Saint Louis Art Museum detailing the history of the Mask and requesting its return to Egypt. St Louis Art Museum say that they did their due diligence on the provenance of the 3,200-year-old artifact, and, in a recent lawsuit, claim that even if the mask was stolen, as the government of Egypt claims, the statute of limitations has expired, limiting the U.S. government's ability to seize stolen property.




The Saint Louis Art Museum collects, presents, interprets, and conserves works of art of the highest quality across time and cultures; educates, inspires discovery, and elevates the human spirit; and preserves a legacy of artistic achievement for the people of St. Louis and the world. The Saint Louis Art Museum’s building was designed by renowned American architect Cass Gilbert for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, also known as the World’s Fair. Originally part of the Palace of Fine Arts, the Museum was the only building from the Fair designed to be a permanent structure, the "one material monument of the Exposition." It stands as a reminder of that defining event in the history of the city of St. Louis and the State of Missouri. The Saint Louis Art Museum is one of the nation's leading comprehensive art museums with collections that include works of art of exceptional quality from virtually every culture and time period. Areas of notable depth include Oceanic art, pre-Columbian art, ancient Chinese bronzes, and European and American art of the late 19th and 20th centuries, with particular strength in 20th-century German and American art. The mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer is one of the highlights of the Egyptian collection, which also includes the mummy Amen-Nestawy-Nakht, with his well-preserved painted plaster case, stone vessels from 3000 B.C. (the oldest pieces in the collection), and objects of the 6th and 7th century from the Byzantine Era. Highlights of the European collection include a late Titian masterpiece left in his studio at his death, a marble Pan made in Michelangelo's workshop in the 1530s, one of only 37 known works by the baroque master Bartolomeo Manfredi painted around 1615, a copper painting made in 1612 by Artemisia Gentileschi, an important Neo-Classical narrative painting by François-André Vincent exhibited in 1785, and a stunning portrait by Hans Holbein depicting the wife of King Henry VIII's comptroller of 1527. The Museum's American holdings reflect the nation's longstanding fascination with landscape and include Hudson River School paintings by Jasper Cropsey, Thomas Cole, and John Frederick Kensett, as well as scenes of the Western frontier. The collection also includes major works by the late nineteenth-century artists Winslow Homer, William Merritt Chase, and Bessie Potter Vonnoh as well as Impressionist compositions by Henry Ossawa Tanner, Childe Hassam, and John Henry Twachtman. Important twentieth-century work by Georgia O'Keeffe, Thomas Hart Benton, Marsden Hartley, John Steuart Curry and Philip Guston is also presented. Among the highlights of the modern art collection, are 19th century paintings by Gustave Courbet, Henri Fantin-Latour, Edouard Manet, and Paul Cézanne as well as Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterworks by Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh, and twentieth century works including the largest public collection of paintings by Max Beckmann in the world. Many of these and numerous works by German Expressionist artists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc, and Wassily Kandinsky were part of a significant bequest by St. Louis collector Morton D. May. Also in the Modern collection are signature works by Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Oscar Kokoschka and Henry Moore, as well as notable paintings by Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, and Amadeo Modigliani. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.slam.org

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