Bought in the Drouot salesrooms on November 10th 1998 by Maryvonne Pinault, the wife of French tycoon François Pinault, a 57 cm high stone statue of the warrior pharaoh Sesostris III has been creating havoc in court for five years while another crucial hearing will take place in Paris on September 10th 2003.
THE FACTS:
On November 10th 1998, French auctioneer Coutau-Bégarie sold for some 770 000 euros a statue of Sesostris III described by French expert Chakib Slitine as a work produced during the reign of the pharaoh, which by all means bore comparison with the statue of the queen Ouret, his mother, a masterpiece that had just been acquired by the Louvre Museum thanks to a generous donation from the Pinault couple.
The Sesostris statue was bought by Mrs Pinault after she reportedly received a favourable opinion from Mrs Elisabeth Delange, an egyptologist and curator of the Louvre Museum who was also said to have asserted that such a piece was worthy of being exhibited permanently in the museum. Apparently, Mrs Pinault thus bought it to donate it to the Louvre.
Before the sale, Dietrich Wildung, head of the Berlin Museum, had however expressed some serious doubts about the authenticity of this sculpture. After acquiring this piece, the Pinault couple rapidly became convinced that it was a forgery and seized a court to ask for the cancellation of the sale. The auctioneer and the expert however remied on a 46-page report produced by Mrs Delange and Mrs Desroches-Noblecourt, former head of the department of antiquities at the Louvre, which asserted that the piece was genuine. The work was therefore considered as authentic though the two experts from the Louvre Museum stressed in their report that it had been made some decades after Sesostris' death.
Such unexpected conclusion placed the counsel of the Pinault couple in a difficult position as most French egyptologists did not want to interfere with the report. As as a result, instead of arguing the statue was a fake, he contended that it had not been properly described in the sale catalogue. In order to obtain the cancellation of the sale, his argument was that it had been executed some decades after the pharaoh's death and not during his reign but the court went against the Pinault couple and ordered them on January 31st 2001 to pay the amount due for the statue.
Mr and Mrs.Pinault then decided to appeal against such decision and called on Luc Watrin, Director of the Grepal archaeological research group, to conduct a study so as to prove that the statue was a forgery. The latter thus went on to discover a series of discrepancies regarding the style and the carving of the statue.
In a 342-page study, Luc Watrin challenged the conclusions of the experts of the Louvre Museum and even suggested that their report was somewhat obliging vis-à-vis the vendor notwithstanding the fact that it did not rest on any pertinent scientific basis.
Mr Watrin, who has been regarded by Mrs Desroches-Noblecourt as being simply a tourists' guide in Egypt who had no authority as a researcher, contended that the statue was a blatant fake and received the support of about twenty foreign egyptologists whose letters were attached to his study. All the more, Luc Watrin discovered in Egypt a clandestine studio where rather convincing forgeries regarding the 12th Dynasty period were being produced and from where the Sesostris statue probably originated.
In addition, a statue of the pharaoh carved in the same type of stone and presenting the same errors as the one detected in the statue of Sesostris bought by the Pinault couple now in the musuem of Atlanta ( from the Hakedis collection) was also described as a forgery.
During the hearing before the court of appeal, Mr Pinault relied on a new counsel after asking the legal advisors of his PPR group to take care of the case in order to base their arguments on Mr Watrin's study. However, they could not get the previous verdict reversed as they did not go further than pleading that they had doubts about the authenticity of the statue. The Pinault couple lost again in court on March 25th 2002 but on Mr Watrin's advice asked the Francine Maurer laboratory to carry out an examination of the piece to determine whether it had been carved during or after the pharaoh's reign. Some 43 areas of the statue were then carefully studied and it was found that besides presenting a serious lack of patina it bore traces of modern steel cisors, which pointed to a modern forgery.
Unabashed, Mr Slitine retorted that such an examination proved nothing because the statue had been repolished without forgetting to signal that the court delivered final verdicts in his favour. Therefore, the case was closed in his view.
Meanwhile, Mrs Desroches-Noblecourt and Mrs Delange had stated in their report that it was impossible to conduct an examination on a "metaphoric stone" to determine the exact date of creation of this sculpture. All the more, they made it rather clear that no one could seriously challenge their opinion.
Mrs and Mr Pinault nevertheless refused to give up especially on the ground that Mr Watrin's study and the conclusions of the Maurer laboratory comforted their belief that the Sesostris statue was a fake. The couple thus decided to have the previous court verdicts quashed.
Bought in the Drouot salesrooms on November 10th 1998 by Maryvonne Pinault, the wife of French tycoon François Pinault, a 57 cm high stone statue of the warrior pharaoh Sesostris III has been creating havoc in court for five years while another crucial hearing will take place in Paris on September 10th 2003.
THE FACTS:
On November 10th 1998, French auctioneer Coutau-Bégarie sold for some 770 000 euros a statue of Sesostris III described by French expert Chakib Slitine as a work produced during the reign of the pharaoh, which by all means bore comparison with the statue of the queen Ouret, his mother, a masterpiece that had just been acquired by the Louvre Museum thanks to a generous donation from the Pinault couple.
The Sesostris statue was bought by Mrs Pinault after she reportedly received a favourable opinion from Mrs Elisabeth Delange, an egyptologist and curator of the Louvre Museum who was also said to have asserted that such a piece was worthy of being exhibited permanently in the museum. Apparently, Mrs Pinault thus bought it to donate it to the Louvre.
Before the sale, Dietrich Wildung, head of the Berlin Museum, had however expressed some serious doubts about the authenticity of this sculpture. After acquiring this piece, the Pinault couple rapidly became convinced that it was a forgery and seized a court to ask for the cancellation of the sale. The auctioneer and the expert however remied on a 46-page report produced by Mrs Delange and Mrs Desroches-Noblecourt, former head of the department of antiquities at the Louvre, which asserted that the piece was genuine. The work was therefore considered as authentic though the two experts from the Louvre Museum stressed in their report that it had been made some decades after Sesostris' death.
Such unexpected conclusion placed the counsel of the Pinault couple in a difficult position as most French egyptologists did not want to interfere with the report. As as a result, instead of arguing the statue was a fake, he contended that it had not been properly described in the sale catalogue. In order to obtain the cancellation of the sale, his argument was that it had been executed some decades after the pharaoh's death and not during his reign but the court went against the Pinault couple and ordered them on January 31st 2001 to pay the amount due for the statue.
Mr and Mrs.Pinault then decided to appeal against such decision and called on Luc Watrin, Director of the Grepal archaeological research group, to conduct a study so as to prove that the statue was a forgery. The latter thus went on to discover a series of discrepancies regarding the style and the carving of the statue.
In a 342-page study, Luc Watrin challenged the conclusions of the experts of the Louvre Museum and even suggested that their report was somewhat obliging vis-à-vis the vendor notwithstanding the fact that it did not rest on any pertinent scientific basis.
Mr Watrin, who has been regarded by Mrs Desroches-Noblecourt as being simply a tourists' guide in Egypt who had no authority as a researcher, contended that the statue was a blatant fake and received the support of about twenty foreign egyptologists whose letters were attached to his study. All the more, Luc Watrin discovered in Egypt a clandestine studio where rather convincing forgeries regarding the 12th Dynasty period were being produced and from where the Sesostris statue probably originated.
In addition, a statue of the pharaoh carved in the same type of stone and presenting the same errors as the one detected in the statue of Sesostris bought by the Pinault couple now in the musuem of Atlanta ( from the Hakedis collection) was also described as a forgery.
During the hearing before the court of appeal, Mr Pinault relied on a new counsel after asking the legal advisors of his PPR group to take care of the case in order to base their arguments on Mr Watrin's study. However, they could not get the previous verdict reversed as they did not go further than pleading that they had doubts about the authenticity of the statue. The Pinault couple lost again in court on March 25th 2002 but on Mr Watrin's advice asked the Francine Maurer laboratory to carry out an examination of the piece to determine whether it had been carved during or after the pharaoh's reign. Some 43 areas of the statue were then carefully studied and it was found that besides presenting a serious lack of patina it bore traces of modern steel cisors, which pointed to a modern forgery.
Unabashed, Mr Slitine retorted that such an examination proved nothing because the statue had been repolished without forgetting to signal that the court delivered final verdicts in his favour. Therefore, the case was closed in his view.
Meanwhile, Mrs Desroches-Noblecourt and Mrs Delange had stated in their report that it was impossible to conduct an examination on a "metaphoric stone" to determine the exact date of creation of this sculpture. All the more, they made it rather clear that no one could seriously challenge their opinion.
Mrs and Mr Pinault nevertheless refused to give up especially on the ground that Mr Watrin's study and the conclusions of the Maurer laboratory comforted their belief that the Sesostris statue was a fake. The couple thus decided to have the previous court verdicts quashed.
QUESTIONS
1) If the Sesostris statue is being considered as authentic by the experts of the Louvre Museum why then the institution has not accepted it as a donation by the Pinault couple? However, according to some well-informed sources, the Pinault couple did not offer it to the museum.
Truly, a donation would have enabled to put an end to a tricky case especially as Mr and Mrs Pinault, who manifested themselves as being among the most generous donators of the Louvre, might now have some reason to withdraw the support the museum has enjoyed so far if it were to be proved it refused a donation..
2) The examinations carried out by the Maurer laboratory and Luc Watrin tend to show that the material used to make the controversial statue does not normally show old traces of alteration notwithstanding the presence of traces of modern tools detected on its surface and the fact that it would appear quite modern in style.
According to 40-year-old Luc Watrin, not less than 40 stylistics incoherences were detected on this statue (a really modern face given to the pharaoh, the upright dorsal pillar of the statue which should in fact have been trapezoidal, an idealized torso, an assymetric head-dress, an exaggerated right-hand thumb, a rather big head, a neck too long, a seat a bit large in comparison with the representations of the 12th Dynasty period, projecting ears, the Nemes head-dress near the temples rectangular on one side, round on the other, the name of the King engraved on his belt with erroneous writings among the erased inscriptions, the poor quality of the stone, normally of the type used 500 years after Sesostris' reign, all these incohreences led him to believed that the statue was a well-done forgery made in a clandestine Cairo studio between the 1940s and the 1970s.
Luc Watrin's opinion has however not been taken seriously because of his young age. However, if it was proved that he has been wrong all the way one would find it ackward that the experts from the Louvre did not find a proper way to ridicule him instead of letting him play a rather nasty game against them. Instead, Mrs Desroches-Noblecourt labelled him as a tourist guide who was unknown among egyptologists.
3) The other curious fact is that no ones knows the true identy of the vendor of the Sesostris statue, which had been entrusted for sale to Mr Slitine by a German lawyer acting for an anonymous owner believed to run the gallery that tried unsuccessfully to sell the statue during the past twenty years. Still, by knowing for good its true owner it would be easier to pinpoint the provenance of the statue and to trace its history back. However, the French judges in charge of the case did not bother to enquire about the identity of its owner.
4) The statue might have been repolished with modern tools at a certain time thus the presence of their traces found by the Maurer laboratory but a repolishing process was only detected within an area where inscriptions had been erased. The main question now is why such inscriptions were taken off ? Would they have constituted the evidence that the statue was a fake because these inscrptions were full of hieroglyphical errors ?
5) Now what can the Pinault couple do after the two successive court defeats they incurred ? Mr and Mrs Pinault have now asked for a revision of the verdicts in basing their demand on the examinations carried out by the Maurer laboratory and on Luc Watrin's extensive study. However, no legal specialist would say for sure whether another judge would quash the verdict as such a decision would be tantamount to admitting that French justice had gone astray.
6) Several egyptologists have however not been at unison regarding the authenticity of this statue. Nicolas Grimal, a co-director at the Karnak Franco-Egyptian Centre, thus estimated that Mrs Desroches-Noblecourt's opinion had not to be challenged. He added that the statue was authentic and that Mr Watrin was just a beginner.
Still, Marcel Maree, curator of the British Museum and a specialist of the Middle-Empire period, was said to believe the statue was a fake. Austrian specialist Helmut Satzinger, director of the Egyptian Museum of Vienna, showed more restraint in stating that the statue could not have been executed after the death of Sesostris III. According to Dietrich Wildung, curator of the Berlin Museum, the statue was made by a forger who was inspired by the Sesostris carving belonging to the Brooklyn Museum. Other Egyptian egyptologists, notably Mamdouh el-Damaty, the current head of the Cairo Museum and Mr Mohamad Saleh, former director of that institution, also believed the piece was a fake. Recently, Jean Yoyotte, professor at the famed College de France and a noted specialist regarding ancient Egypt, stated that the statue was most probably a forgery.
7) This statue was reportedly offered in 1981 by a Zurich gallery to the Egyptian Museum of Berlin with a base ornated with inscriptions that seemed false according to the Museum specialist, Dr Rolph Krauss. The Museum therefore refused to buy that piece, which was eventually shown by a New York antique dealer to several American museums. In 1982, the doubtful inscriptions were erased from the base and professor Hans Muller then concluded it was genuine.
In 1982, the statue was submitted to the Geneva Museum, which rejected and so did the organisers of the Basel Antique fair. In 1998, it was brought to Mr Slitine by a German lawyer with a view to having it sold in the Drouot salesrooms. The French expert then contacted Dietrich Wildung who stated a few days before the sale that it was in his view a forgery. Nevertheless, the piece was sold on November 10th 1998.
8) Mrs Desroches-Noblecourt stated in an interview with the magazine "Lire" published in July 2002 that the first time she saw the statue she thought it was a forgery before she carried out an extensive study that enabled her to determine that such piece had been executed about six decades after the death of Sesostris. She added that she had not understood why Mr Pinault had given up the idea of keeping the statue. Still, it would be interesting to know whether Mrs Desroches -Noblecourt contacted Dietrich Wildung to convince him that the statue was authentic.
9) The existence of modern studios of forgers in Egypt cannot be disputed especially as the main chief of a ring of traffickers of genuine objects but also of well-imitated forgeries was arrested at the beginning of 2003 in Cairo. . Egyptian police hope that this manwill finally reveal how his fruitful trafficking has been functioing and how forgeries made in Cairo were illegally exported. Police also expect that this rather influential man will disclose how antique pieces have been illegally dug out and sent to Europe. It is a fact that since the early 1970s many forgeries carved in stones similar to that used for the statue of Sesostris and strangely presenting the same anomalies have been appearing regularly on the art market, Luc Watrin stated. . 10) The examination process of antique objects is not easy, especially regarding recent discoveries that are not sufficiently documented. When it is almost impossible to trace back the provenance of a piece, an expert can only rely on its aspect, its style, its quality and other clues that still may lead to contrasted opinions between specialists. This is the case with the Sesostris statue, which was apparently not found during a classical archaeologic campaign. All sorts of assumptions could therefore be made going from a theft in a tomb, an illegal exportation of a non-documented objects by a collector or simply a forgery.
All the more, any expert opinion in the field of egyptology rests on the competences of the specialist in charge of an appraisal. In the eyes of French judges, Mrs Desroches-Noblecourt carries much more weight than Luc Watrin since her experience is almost unrivalled. That is why certain egyptologists believe that her report cannot be questioned. However, no expert can prove to be sure at 100% regarding appraisals, meaning that errors are still possible as it is a known fact that many fakes are being held in the reserves of several museums, including the Louvre. It thus takes years to detect them. According to Luc Watrin, the fact that 40 anomalies have been found on the Sesostris statue pinpoints to a fake. Once again, if the statue is genuine why then the Louvre has not accepted it as a donation from the Pinault couple?
Another report concocted by Mr Bertrand Duboscq, an expert in traceology, has confirmed Luc Watrin's opinion on the basis of an examination of traces left by tools to execute this statue, which point to the use of modern cisors, especially steel blades. Another study conducted by Professor Klemm, a well-known egyptologist from Munich, has stressed that the traces found on the statue of Sesostris III have nothing to do with those found on genuine pieces dating back to the time of the pharaoh's reign and that they are modern.
In the light of these studies, Mrs Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt has felt obliged to produce a four-page report in which she declared that it was rather normal to find traces of ferrous elements on the Sesostris statue since such materials were common during the Middle Empire period. However, such statement came as a surprise as no one knew so far that Egyptian sculptors used ferrous tools during the bronze age.
THE QUEEN OURET AND THE SESOSTRIS CASE
While expecting a final issue to this intricate affair, it seems useful to recall that Mr Slitine's counsel had stressed during the previous trials that Mr and Mrs Pinault had contributed to the purchase by the Louvre museum in 1997 of a statue of the Queen Ouret, mother of Sesostris. In his catalogue Mr Slitine notably went as far as comparing such piece to the statue of Sesostris III.
The latter's counsel had then lashed out at Mr Pinault's lawyer who had criticised the pedigree of the Sesostris statue regarding the mention "succession H.E" in the sale catalogue, which strangely corresponded with the initials of Heinz Eckert, the German lawyer behind whom the owner of that piece was hiding. Such pedigree had been rejected by Mr Pinault's lawyers who underlined the hazy provenance of such piece but Mr Slitine's counsel retorted that such practice was not rare on the art market before going on to discuss the suspicious provenance of the statue of Queen Ouret said to originate from the "former Meyer de Stadelhofen collection".
The statue of Queen Ouret had been acquired by the Louvre Museum with the help of the society of the friends of the Louvre in 1997. Such statue had been described as a masterpiece made during the Middle Empire period rather worthy to enrich the collections of the museum. A study of the statue was published rapidly at the end of 1997 in the« Manuel de l'Ecole du Louvre » by C. Ziegler and J.L Bovot with a photograph of this recent acquisition bearing the mention « Provenance unknown ».
In February 1998, C. Ziegler wrote in the " Revue du Louvre" magazine a lengthy article about the statue of Queen Ouret in which readers finally discovered a « Collection Meyer de Stadelhofen » pedigree.
Ziegler added in a note attached to his article that the statue of Queen Ouret had entered the Myer de Stadelhofen collection at the turn of the 20th Century and that it had been only shown to a few amateurs who had not been able to decipher the inscriptions it bore.
Such remark was in fact a pure invention since many specialists knew that the statue did not originate from the Stadelhofen collection, some egyptologists stressed.
What happened between 1997 and 1998 ?
Meanwhile, many egyptologists were invited at the inauguration of the new rooms of the Louvre Museum, including Farouk Hosni, the Egyptian Culture minister, who was rather astonished to discover the statue of Queen Ouret, which he knew quite well as he had seen it previously in a private Egyptian collection before 1997. The minister made some fuss before the officials of the Louvre Museum but the dispute did not go further for some obscure reasons.
A bit of history
This statue of Queen Ouret is probably one of the greatest masterpieces in terms of the representation of a royal female figure of the Middle Empire period. While the authenticity of such statue is unquestionable, it emanates from this piece a true power of representation with finely engraved texts and no anolamy regarding its style whereas the patina is superb making the Sesostris statue acquired by the Pinault couple look quite pale in comparison.
The sculpture representing Queen Ouret was reportedly kept in a famous Egyptian collection between 1940 and 1997, the year it was said to have been sold by the heirs of its owner to a trafficker before it was illegally exported from Egypt. It landed in Geneva where several French antique dealers went on to battle for it before one of them won the deal and offered the statue to the Louvre for about $ 2 million. The Museum needed fresh money to acquire the piece and Mr Fumaroli, head of the Society of the Friends of the Louvre turned to Mrs Pinault who eventually donated $ 850,000 to help the Museum buy it. The society reunited the rest of the money and offered the statue to the French institution.
An archaeological investigation
In his article written about Queen Ouret, Mr Ziegler somewhat dodged the question of the origin of Queen Ouret's statue whereas the inscriptions it bore clearly indicated that the queen was "loved by the Khoum god lord of Elephantine". Such piece was probably found on the Elephantine Island facing the town of Aswan especially as diggings conducted during the 1940s in this area led to the discovery of a sanctuary dedicated to a governor named Hekaib who had been deified. Sovereigns of the Middle Empire period had notably been accustomed to place statues representing their images in this sanctuary to obtain the protection of the god as well as the support of influential local families.
Generally, these statues were placed in pairs on both sides of the entrance of the temple (as an example two 60 cm-high statues of Sesostris III shown seated were found on this spot). An archaeological campaign led to the discovery of the inferior part of a statue shown seated, the two hands resting on the knees bearing the name of Queen Ouret (plate 193 published in "Elephantine IV, The Sanctuary of Hekaib", DAIK 1985) which is identical to the piece now in the Louvre Museum. It is therefore quite possible that the statue acquired by the museum was found clandestinely during the 1940s when official diggings were being conducted.
Finally Mr and Mrs Pinault might face themselves in a tricky position since they apparently contributed to the acquisition of a stolen statue in 1997 before buying a fake the following year. They surely did not know the controversial origin of the statue of Queen Ouret but if Egypt came to ask for its return the present court case might go beyond the frame of justice and become an embarrassing matter for the French government.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian police has been busy questioning Tareq al Soweissi, an influential politician suspected of being the chief of a ring of traffickers, and is now trying to locate his European correspondents, notably a dealer who is suspected of having sold many antique pieces illegally exported from Egypt.
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