Future of the Gold Vessel from Ur (or Troy?) Remains Uncertain

Earlier I discussed the case of a gold vessel from Iraq that was offered for sale by ancient coin auction house Hirsch Nachfolger in 2005 and seized by German officials after it was spotted ("The Curious Case of a Gold Vessel from Ur"). The case has received less press in English speaking media than in Germany, but has been summarized and commented upon by some others in the blogosphere: "Gold Vessel from Ur - or is that Troy?" (Gill); "Mainz and the Gold Vessel" (Gill); "Why do Antiquities from Iraq Continue to Surface on the Market?" (Gill); "What is Münzhandlung Hirsch going to do with the Ur-Troy Goldgefäß?" (Barford).

Michael-Müller Karpe, an authority on ancient metalwork from Mesopotamia, examined the vessel and determined it was likely looted from a royal tomb in or near Ur. Münzhandlung Hirsch Nachfolger claims the vessel is from Troy. Müller-Karpe had been retaining the vessel at the request of the Iraqi embassy in Berlin, but the vessel has now been turned over again to German authorities and its future remains uncertain.

From the Earth Times via the Museum Security Network:

Setback for Iraq as Ancient Gold Vial Seized in Germany

Berlin - In a setback for Iraqi efforts to claim a tiny ancient gold vial, the item has been sent to a valuer in line with a German court order, a lawyer said Tuesday. Both a Munich auctioneer and the Iraqi government claim the dented little container. A German archaeology museum, which has taken Iraq's side, believes the item is 4,500 years old and comes from ancient Mesopotamia.

The attorney representing Gerhard Hirsch Nachfolger, the Munich auction company, said the museum had surrendered the item after a stalemate of many weeks.

The auctioneer hopes that a Berlin valuer will decide the mystery item is not Mesopotamian, but Roman, allowing it to go back on sale. It was seized in 2005, halting an earlier auction.

Customs agents appointed by a tax court in Munich picked up the plain vial, which is 35 millimetres high, on Monday from the Roman and Germanic Museum in Mainz.

Iraq's ambassador to Berlin had hoped the museum would safeguard the vial until its provenance and value are clear.

But the museum director decided to surrender the item, 3sat television reported. Archaeologist Michael Mueller-Karpe of the Mainz museum believes the object was looted from a royal grave in Iraq.

(Photo from Deutsche Welle)

CoinArchives.com Limits Access and Implements Fee

Coin find inventories and museum collections are increasingly being made freely available through online databases. It is also a growing trend that academic journals are being made available electronically while subscription prices are being lowered for those who opt for online subscription only. Therefore, it is curious these days when a resource suddenly ceases to be free and implements an inordinate access fee.

As I came into the office yesterday, the first thing I heard from a colleague was that CoinArchives.com had ceased allowing free and complete access to its archived auction sales and had limited full access only to those who pay an annual subscription of $600 or €430.

CoinArchives.com was a convenient reference used by some academics and researchers who wanted to start conducting a die study or who needed to make quick identification. It was also an easy place to go when one needed to see an image when certain reference catalogues were not at immediately at hand. Collectors frequently used the site to conduct their own research or to investigate pricing trends before making an acquisition. The recent and seemingly abrupt decision to limit access has certainly stirred up spirited discussions on collector fora such the Moneta-L list (click the link and see the subsequent discussion threads).

There has been a lot of speculation as to why this decision was made to limit access only to those who can pay such a large fee. But perhaps it is telling that instead of a $20 yearly access fee for which many people would pay, a $600 annual fee was chosen that will exclude most collectors, researchers, and institutions, and will therefore be a resource which only a few large auction houses and profitable dealers can afford. The fee will limit the potential of amateur and academic study alike with this resource and will be an especially serious blow to collectors who like to do a bit market research before bidding or buying.

Perhaps researchers will return to using large photo files like those at the American Numismatic Society or at Frankfurt University, but many photo files have ceased to be updated since the mid- to late 1990s precisely because of sites like CoinArchives.com that were electronically archiving sales and making those archives free to the public.

Coins in Context I: St. Krmnicek, "Das Konzept der Objektbiographie in der antiken Numismatik"

Here is the third installment in the series of posts about the new book, Coins in Context I: New Perspectives for the Interpretation of Coin Finds. Stefan Krmnicek’s "Das Konzept der Objektbiographie in der antiken Numismatik" (pp. 47-59) discusses theoretical applications in numismatics, namely the concept of "object biography." It is the only contribution in the volume that is not published in English, though it is preceded by a short abstract in English (p. 47).

Coins are economic tools and are frequently studied from this single perspective in modern discourses but, just as today, objects can have multiple varying and simultaneous functions. This contribution examines the contemporary reception of ancient coins by exploring the different potential functions they had. The first section of the article "Die Grundlagen des modernen Fachverständnisses" (pp. 48-52) is a short historiographic discussion on the way that our understanding of ancient coins has been shaped by centuries of study. The end of the section introduces a discussion on how developing theories and perspectives in prehistoric archaeology have influenced Iron Age numismatics, especially in defining a dichotomy between ritual and non-ritual interpretations.

The rest of the relatively short contribution provides an example from Arrian’s Cynegeticus (32, 1-2) where coins take on a completely different function as ritual offerings and posits a hypothetical model illustrating how the meaning of a coin could have changed at different times in its "lifetime." As archaeologists and numismatists, we must be aware that in most cases the only function or meaning of a coin that we can recognize will be that from its final deposition, i.e. from its find context. Any meaning it had before its final deposition will, in most cases, be lost to modern observers.

It is argued that the foundations for a discussion on the value of theory in numismatics have been laid in studies on Iron Age coin finds, but such perspectives could be applied to other areas of ancient numismatics as well.

All current and future posts pertaining to this book can be easily found by the keyword "Coins in Context I."