Earlier today I read on Paul Barford’s blog an entry entitled “Human body parts – price on request” which stated that Sue McGovern of Sands of Time Ancient Art was selling a “barbarously lopped-off foot of a human cadaver” via her website. Obviously I was startled that such an item would be sold via an internet website, but decided to do a little fact checking of my own, because Sue tends to be a fairly responsible dealer and is well respected in the “online world”.
The site that Barford wrote about was NOT OFFICIALLY “live”. He read about it on the AncientArtifacts Yahoo discussion list where Sue wrote: “There are a number of images missing from descriptions, that I know about, and we are using an old copy of the database so pieces that have sold are back as being available so please ignore this also. For those that wish to play – order anything you wish – it will be ignored as this is a test database.” (emphasis added). In following up with Sue, she confirmed that “…made it very clear this morning that the link was to a test site with test data. The email was only sent to the ancientartifacts group, not my full client list.” (Pers. comm.)
If you look at the item which Paul Barford wrote about, the CORRECT data for the ACTUAL item offered via the internet has been entered along with its photograph. It is in fact an Egyptian foot, but it is WOOD. Photograph to boot: http://www.sotantiquities.com/proddetail.asp?prod=EM806.
While Paul is not a reporter, he has made himself into a journalist of sorts with his blog entries and his writing for SAFECorner. It is incredibly irresponsible to report something just for “shock value” without checking the facts, especially when those facts were right there in the same request for testing of the website where he “found” the link and when a reply from Sue took all of an hour to be received.
Generally, I stay away from the tabloids and may pick one up to scan through when I am at the supermarket checkout counter just for giggles. But when articles are published in such a sensational matter, that they are so incredibly ridiculous that they can be classified as fiction, anything written that MAY have the ring of truth must also be scrutinized very carefully. I have moved Paul Barford’s blog in my RSS newsreader from the “Cultural Heritage” category to the “Comics” category. His entries now show up after my daily dose of Dilbert, where they belong.Finally, for completeness sake, the sale of a 3500 year old Egyptian mummy part is VERY different from the sale of Native American body parts and Paul knows it. Even archaeologists recognize this difference. On the The Cultural Property and Archaeology Law Blog there is a link to a paper (work in progress) titled: “Ethical Issues in Cultural Property Law Pertaining to Indigenous Peoples” by Kimberly L. Alderman, which discusses some of the “differences”. (Paper cited as an example that Archaeologists view such issues as “different”, not that I agree with everything written in this paper, in all fairness, I have not finished “digesting” what I have read, nor have I given it the attention it deserves, but it certainly looks VERY interesting)
Such items as mummies, mummy parts and other ancient artifacts are in fact, part of old collections throughout the world. When these collections are acquired, it is important that these items be treated with respect. Such items generally are sold discretely and to institutions whenever possible.
