Rampant Antiquities Theft Threatens Cultural Heritage Around The World

Earlier this week, Europol announced the latest results of Pandora III, a law enforcement operation aimed at cracking down on the illegal trade of antiquities. The operation involved police and customs officials from 29 countries and was coordinated by the Spanish Civil Guard. All told, the operation resulted in the arrest of 59 individuals and the recovery of more than 18,000 cultural objects, including Greek and Roman coins, a 15^th-century Bible, and a Mesopotamian crystal cylinder seal. 

These results are not unusual. In 2018, operation Pandora II resulted in 51 arrests and the recovery of more than 41,000 objects. And, in 2017, Pandora I resulted in 75 arrests and the recovery of more than 3,500 objects. Nor is Europe the only place where such crime is rampant. Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that Subhash Kappor, a Manhattan art dealer, was charged with overseeing a multinational trafficking network that had stolen more than $145 million worth of objects, and this week The Times of Israel reported the arrest of two crews of antiquities thieves in the West Bank. 

For some, there is a desire to not just learn about the past, or to see ancient remains, but instead to personally own objects of remote antiquity. To acquire antiquities, however, is to inherently come into contact with criminal enterprise. Donna Yates, archaeologist and expert on antiquities theft, told me that there is no clean market for antiquities. “It’s a grey market … The (few) totally legal antiquities out there are sold alongside the loot and they are impossible for even a well-meaning buyer to differentiate between.”  

Instead, the antiquities market has numerous connections to problematic actors. In a piece written for CNN last year, art historian Noah Charney described how organized international crime syndicates have been involved in art crime since the 1960s. And earlier this year, the BBC reported that antiquities looted from Middle Eastern sites by members of the Islamic State are still being sold on Facebook and other social media sites. 

Looted ancient objects represent an irreplaceable loss of knowledge. When these artifacts are harvested purely for their financial value, no attention is paid to where they were found, what they might have been found with, or the ephemeral traces of how those objects were used. Archaeology is a notoriously slow discipline because excavators vigilantly record every possible scrap of information to illuminate the original purpose of an object. Without that contextual data, an ancient coin or ceramic vessel is reduced to a pretty object sitting on a shelf rather than the rich source of information that it could be.

From back to front, the antiquities market represents a nefarious space tied to criminal enterprise and the destruction of cultural heritage. Yet, my archaeological colleagues regularly receive emails from people who bought objects from “reputable” dealers or who “picked something up” on vacation. eBay is awash in accounts posting undocumented antiquities, and earlier this month Christies sold a bust of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun despite objections from Egyptian government officials that it had not been established if the bust had been legally exported. 

For those who still wish to buy antiquities, Yates went on to note that “there’s a danger you will lose your money and the object of it is seized, or, worse, be charged with something.” Beyond that, buyers “risk contributing to the destruction of the past.”