Michael Steinhardt’s looted antiquities coming back to Israel

JUDITH SUDILOVSKY

Repatriated antiquities valued at $5 million date back to 7000 BCE, include gold masks, carved ivory head and death Masks.

Michael Steinhardt speaks at the Champions of Jewish Values International Awards Gala in New York City, May 21, 2017. / (photo credit: MICHAEL BROCHSTEIN/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES/JTA)

Some 39 stolen antiquities valued at more than $5 million are to be repatriated to Israel following a multi-national criminal investigation into the purchase of antiquities by Jewish philanthropist and ancient art collector Michael Steinhardt.

In a March 22 press release Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr. said 28 of the objects, some of which were looted from the West Bank, were turned over to Israeli authorities, and three objects have already been transferred to Israel, but eight objects had not been located yet. He said they will be returned as soon as they are found.

Two of the missing objects, including a cosmetic spoon dating back to 800-700 BCE valued at approximately $6,500 and a red carnelian sunfish amulet, dating to approximately 600 B.C.E. and valued at approximately $7,000, will be returned to the Palestinian Authorities once located.

The antiquities seized from Steinhardt’s collection were officially repatriated to Israel during a ceremony attended by Dr. Eitan Klein, Deputy Director of the Theft Prevention Unit within the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and US Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) Acting Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge Mike Alfonso.

“These antiquities are priceless for the State of Israel and its people. They Symbolize our rich and vast cultural heritage. Now, they are being returned to their rightful owners,” said Klein, thanking the US officials for their efforts.

“Illicit trafficking and looting of cultural property can be prevented through coordination at the international level. We believe that cooperation between the State of Israel and the United States of America will yield more fruitful results in the coming period.”

The objects repatriated to Israel were among the total 180 stolen antiquities valued at $70 million seized from Steinhardt in the multi-year investigation which concluded in December 2021.

One of the world’s largest ancient art collectors, Steinhardt received an unprecedented life-time ban on acquiring antiquities in an agreement with the district attorney’s office.

A lawyer for Steinhardt, an important donor to Israeli cultural institutions and the founder of the Birthright free travel program to Israel for young diaspora Jews, has said many of the dealers from whom Steinhardt bought the artifacts had misrepresented their alleged provenance and legal status.  

Steinhardt is also a patron of educational institutions in New York and has invested in baseball teams. In the 1990s he purchased two islands in the Falkland Islands at Argentina’s southernmost tip and donated then to the Wildlife Conservation Society.

He has also faced sexual harassment accusations.

As a strong supporter of Israel, his defenders in Israel have said that his contributions to Israel outweigh any wrongs he may have done.

The D.A.’s office press release describes how Steinhardt purchased 28 of the items from Israeli antiquities dealer Gil Chaya, who bought illegal antiquities with his then-wife directly from looters, and two items from illegal antiquities dealer Rafi Brown.

Among those antiquities Steinhardt purchased from Chaya which will be repatriated are the Carved Ivory Head, which dates back to 1300-1200 B.C.E, and a set of three Death Masks, dating back to 6000 to 7000 B.C.E., now valued at $650,000. Two Gold Masks dating back even earlier to 5000 BCE which Steinhardt purchased from Brown will also be returned.

In addition, Neolithic masks depicting stylized human heads dating to around 7000 BCE valued at three million dollars and an incense burner with ducks, goats, and gazelle dating back to 1700 BCE valued at $70,000 will also be coming back to Israel.

Also among the antiquities seized in location are the Heliodorus Stele and two Neolithic masks which Steinhardt had loaned to the Israel Museum.

In the January press release the Manhattan District Attorney’s office outlined the process of the investigation into Steinhardt’s purchases of illegal antiquities. Many of the antiquities seized from Steinhardt were trafficked following civil unrest or looting, they said.

The criminal investigation into Steinhardt began in February 2017 when the D.A.’s office began investigating the purchase of the multi-million-dollar Bull’s Head statue, which was stolen from Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War, and which Steinhardt had loaned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

That statue and another second multi-million-dollar marble statue seized from Steinhardt, the Calf Bearer, were repatriated to Lebanon in December 2017.

In the process of uncovering the Lebanese statues, the D.A.’s Office learned that Steinhardt had additional looted antiquities at his apartment and office, and initiated a grand jury criminal investigation into his acquisition, possession, and sale of more than 1,000 antiquities since at least 1987.

During their investigation the D.A.’s Office issued 17 search warrants and conducted joint investigations with law-enforcement authorities in Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Turkey. 

On the January 12, 2022 Bragg’s office announced the repatriation of the first of the 180 objects seized from Steinhardt, the “Veiled Head of a Female,” a marble bust antiquity dating back to 350 BCE valued at $1.2 million, which was returned to Libya.

In the January press release the Manhattan District Attorney’s office outlined the process of the investigation into Steinhardt’s purchases of illegal antiquities. Many of the antiquities they seized from Steinhardt were trafficked following civil unrest or looting, they said.

According to filed documents, said the D.A.’s office, Steinhardt purchased the Veiled Head of a Female, which originated from a tomb at the ancient city of Cyrene—modern day Shahhat, Libya—in November 2000.

A year earlier, scientific excavations in that area had been forced to shut down due to growing unrest and governmental instability, the press release noted.

Antiquities thieves took advantage of the situation and began extensive looting for tombs in Cyrene. The Veiled Head of a Female first appeared on the market immediately after reports of these lootings.

“These rare and beautiful artifacts, which are thousands of years old, have been kept from the public because of illegal looting and trafficking,” said Bragg. “My office is proud to once again return historic antiquities to where they rightfully belong.”

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Can archaeologists find the Ark of the Covenant? – book review

HADASSAH FAUR

STEVEN SPIELBERG’S Ark of the Covenant from his iconic film ‘Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ on display at Washington’s National Geographic Museum. / (photo credit: Mary Harrsch/Flickr)

“It was a city that was increasingly sprawling outside its Old City walls and a city that had a mixed and intermingling multi-faith population. A city with as many divisions within faiths as between them. A sacred city but by no means an entirely pious one,” writes Graham Addison about Jerusalem in the early 1900s, in his account of the Parker Expedition’s attempt to discover the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Hidden Ark. 

It was in these strained, occasionally corrupt and constantly changing surroundings that a peculiar group covertly bribed its way into an expedition to uncover the Ark and let loose a vast chain of repercussions. While the expedition lasted only three years, Addison sheds light on its enduring legacy and the factors that brought the expedition to believe they would succeed in uncovering the 3,000-year-old holy relic. 

The last known location of the Ark of the Covenant was in the First Temple’s Holy of Holies. However, after the Temple’s destruction in 586 BCE, it disappeared.

Finnish scholar Valter Henrik Juvelius claimed to have decoded numeric ciphers in the Bible indicating that the Ark was hidden in the intersection of the water tunnels and canal that once carried blood from the sacrificial offering in the Temple.

Juvelius successfully convinced a number of British aristocrats, among them Montague Parker, to embark on an archaeological quest to locate the Ark. Many of them, Addison observes, were bored and “trying to make something of their lives.” For them, the expedition was “an exotic adventure to fill their time. It had elements of risk and danger. It was different.”

ark of the covenant (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The expedition members were not archaeologists and did not bother to research previous digs in the area or to record their own excavations. What’s more, evidence indicates that they bribed Ottoman authorities to permit the excavations; the British ambassador to Constantinople wrote, “I suspect a good many people got fat over the business.”

Nevertheless, the expedition members proceeded to dig from what is now the City of David into ancient Jerusalem’s water tunnels and shafts, completely draining the Siloam Tunnel, diverting water from the Gihon Spring and other passages, and searching for a formerly submerged secret entrance. They found nothing, save some pottery, a piece of an Ionic column, old lamps, Roman projectiles and coins, and an ancient toilet. 

Although it was forbidden to dig within the Temple Mount, Parker eventually managed to bribe authorities to allow the expedition to do so.

The expedition members dug for nine nights before they were discovered, just as hostilities between religions in Jerusalem were on the high due to Passover, Easter, and the Muslim Nabi Musa celebrations. Havoc ensued, with local uproar, demonstrations and the arrest of Temple Mount guards and the expedition’s middleman; the remaining members fled Jerusalem.

THIS INCIDENT left an enduring mark on Jerusalem’s Muslim population, encouraging, as Addison describes it, “a sense of Palestinian identity, centered on Jerusalem and the Haram al-Sharif.” He suggests that the scandal helped bring Muslims together under a unified front to defend al-Haram al-Sharif in an “emerging sense of Palestinian nationalism.”

The Jewish population felt threatened by the Parker Expedition’s encroachment as well, at the time recruiting Baron de Rothschild to invest in parallel digs and ensure Jewish relics didn’t fall into Christian hands.

Seventy years later, Rabbi Shlomo Goren and Rabbi Yehuda Getz, the rabbi of the Western Wall, repeated the expedition’s stunt, digging beneath the Temple Mount secretly, until they, too, were discovered.

While the expedition may have provoked much outrage, it also provided a service to the local population, employing hundreds in the project and filtering the water in the Virgin’s Well and Siloam Pool, after having drained and cleaned the area. They even rebuilt steps to allow for better access to the spring. 

The tunnels the Parker Expedition dug out were meticulously mapped by Father Vincent, a French archaeologist and monk, and provided the pillars for future archaeological digs in the area for the next century.

Most notably, in 1995, Israeli archaeologists Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron continued digging in the same water tunnels and shafts, eventually opening them to the public in the City of David.

“That these visitors walk through the Siloam Tunnel and see the Warren Shaft system is a direct legacy of the work the Parker Expedition carried out,” Addison writes. 

The legacy of the expedition members themselves was perhaps less fortunate.

“Within a few years, three were dead, one was mad, two were bankrupt, one divorced and another deported,” Addison notes. As for Juvelius, he continued decrypting additional ciphers that never availed to any discoveries until the end of his life.

While the narrative of the Parker Expedition is in and of itself rather eccentric, Addison’s account does not fall short of further outlandish tales, Ark theories, anecdotes, and snippets from famous authors of the time referencing members or events relating to the expedition. 

Whether the Ark is hidden beneath Jerusalem is unknown. However, the belief that it has been concealed and preserved beneath the city for 3,000 years spurred an expedition so bizarre, it attracted the world’s attention and caused a ripple effect whose reverberations are still felt today. 

Raiders of the Hidden Ark
By Graham Addison
Edgcumbe Press
298 pages; $12.42

Defense Minister Gantz meets with King Abdullah II in Jordan

ANNA AHRONHEIM

There were a lot of terror attacks in Israel in March, two of which left multiple victims dead.

Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz is seen meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Amman, Jordan, on January 5, 2022. /  (photo credit: Royal Hashemite Court)

Amid an uptick of violence in Israel and a public spat with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Defense Minister Benny Gantz met with King Abdullah II of Jordan at the King’s Palace in Amman on Tuesday.

According to a statement released by his office, during the meeting that addressed regional security challenges, Gantz discussed the steps that Israel intends to take ahead of the month of Ramadan in order to preserve freedom of worship in Jerusalem and the West Bank, the importance of security coordination during the holy days as well as additional steps that could be taken in order to improve the lives of Palestinians.

“The Defense Minister emphasized the importance of maintaining stability and calm, and the overall need to fight terrorism, in particular the Islamic State group which is behind the recent terrorist attacks in Israel,” the statement read.

Wishing the King and all Jordanians a “Ramadan Kareem,” Gantz thanked Abdullah “for his leadership and positive influence on the entire region, as well as for his willingness to strengthen cooperation between the Kingdom and Israel in all areas, and to deepen peace between the two countries,” the statement added.

Gantz and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett have been engaged in a public spat over the defense minister’s desire to meet with the King and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Minister of Defense Benny Gantz speaks at a conference of the Israeli newspaper ”Makor Rishon” at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem, February 21, 2022. (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

According to Israeli media, Bennett stopped Gantz from participating in the meeting and expressed his “displeasure” from Gantz’s failure to tell him of his plans.

On Saturday Culture and Sports Minister MK (Kahol Lavan) Chili Tropper told Channel 13 that Gantz wanted to meet with Abbas in Ramallah in order to avoid an escalation.

The defense minister has met with the two men before. Gantz first met Abbas in August-marking the first meeting of a senior Israeli government official with a Palestinian Authority leader since 2010. He then hosted Abbas in his home in Rosh Ha’ayin in December in order to discuss issues related to security, civil and the economy. 

Gantz and Abdullah then met and discussed how to strengthen Israeli-Jordanian ties and issues of mutual concern including ways to enhance security and stability in the region.

Gantz and Abdullah previously met ahead of the February 2020 election.

Amman and Jerusalem not only have robust security coordination and intelligence sharing mechanisms regarding the common threats, but according to foreign reports, Jordan has allowed Israeli jets to use its airspace for its war-between-wars campaign in Syria.

In October, a German military photographer posted two pictures of Jordanian fighter jets taking part in Israel’s Blue Flag aerial exercise on social media, inadvertently revealing that the kingdom had participated in the drill.

Until the photos were posted, Jordan’s participation in the two-week-long bi-annual exercise had officially been kept a secret.

The strategic depth provided by Jordan, which has not entered into any alliance with neighboring countries hostile to Israel, has kept Israel’s eastern and longest border the quietest and safest for decades.

Both countries understand that should security ties fail, not only will the king face instability at home, but the violence could spill over the border to Israel.

With a majority of Jordan’s citizens of Palestinian descent, Palestinian self-determination and maintaining the status quo of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, which is administered by the Jordanian Islamic Trust, are key aspects

News From Israel- March 28, 2022

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