« The Toxicologist and Her Coronet
Main
Problems Are on the Horizon »
May 6, 2008
The Schøyen Collection for Sale
Over the last few weeks, I've written about three of the four missing tablets from Ugarit that were once housed at the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity in Claremont, California and known as the Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets. I'll be doing a post on the fourth missing tablet very soon. This collection, no doubt looted for Ugarit, contained two other tablets that are not missing. They are in the Martin Schøyen Collection of manuscripts and other antiquities relating to writing. I've written about all this before. We now hear from Newsfinder that the Schøyen Collection is for sale. The preferred buyer is the Norwegian government for its National Library. There are many complications, some of which involve final ownership rights to a large group of Buddhist manuscripts removed from Afghanistan soon after the Taliban took over. But who should really control many of the other items in the collection including the two tablets from Ugarit?
In a statement, the Schoyen Library points out that the Buddhist manuscripts are the only ones that do not come from old collections, “but were acquired to prevent destruction, after requests from Buddhists and scholars.” The statement goes on to address the question of whether these manuscripts should be returned to Afghanistan, “after they have been published, and if peace, order, religious tolerance and safe conditions have been established in that country.” But after analyzing the history of Afghanistan, the Schoyen Library concludes that it is “not the right and safe home for these manuscripts in the future.” [Newsfinder, Emphasis added]
But exactly what is an "old collection" and is it even relevant? As a collection, the Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets are no older than 1957, the year that, according to the official story, they looted from Ugarit. It is arguable that they didn't exist as a collection until 1970 when a consortium of academic institutions put together by Loren Fisher purchased them. And how about the five Dead Sea Scroll fragments in the Schøyen Collection? Are they from a sufficiently "old collection" as to confuse ethical questions of ownership rights to looted antiquities?
Via PaleoJudaica and Evangelical Textual Criticism
Posted by Duane Smith at May 6, 2008 10:08 AM | Read more on Ugarit |
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telecomtally.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2493