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artifacts and $3 million to resolve a Later in June 2020, word came out
civil forfeiture complaint and multi- that another 2,000 Iraqi artifacts were
year investigation by the United States found, bringing the total number to be
Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District returned this time to 13,500 objects,
of New York and U.S. Immigration and 5,000 of which were believed to have
Customs Enforcement, Homeland been stolen from the Iraqi national
Security Investigations (HSI). museum in 2003.
“U.S. Immigration and Customs And in the most recent news about
Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director the Museum, a law article written by
Thomas D. Homan and Iraq's Caroline Goldstein for artnet.com writ-
Ambassador to the United States ten on January 29, 2021, reported that
Fareed Yasseen will sign the ceremonial the Museum must return still more
certificates transferring ownership of artifacts: an entire warehouse of 5,000
the artifacts from the United States to Egyptian objects. According to
Iraq. Richard P. Donoghue, United Goldstein, “The Museum of the Bible
States Attorney for the Eastern District in Washington, DC has returned some
of New York, and Ian Saunders, Acting 5,000 artifacts to the Egyptian govern-
Assistant Commissioner, Office of A few of the 6,500 clay objects the Museum of the Bible is repatriating to ment, after years of talks between
International Affairs, U.S. Customs and Iraq. photo: eternitynews.com.au agencies including HSI and the
Border Protection will also participate in the repatriation ceremony.” Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. The objects have been
As a result of returning objects identified as illegal from the 2010 held at the Museum since its opening in 2016. Egypt has been seeking
purchase along with the $3 million to assist in the repatriation, Hobby repatriation of the objects, which it says were smuggled illegally out of the
Lobby was charged with making a major shift in the country, for just as long.
way it purchased items for its collections. It was “The objects include funerary masks; fragments
required to hire qualified outside customs counsel of coffins; a set of portraits of the dead; heads of
and customs brokers, submit quarterly activity stone statues; manuscripts of Christian prayers
reports to the U.S. Attorney’s Office regarding any written in both Arabic and Coptic, and just Arabic;
cultural purchases over the next 18 months, provide and pieces of papyrus with text in Coptic and Greek,
in-depth training to its current staff, and update and as well as hieratic and demotic script. The pieces will
upgrade its internal operations for gathering objects be displayed in Cairo’s Coptic Museum.”
for its collection.
The Latest
Ongoing Problem In an effort to further explain their role as victims
On October 23, 2018, just three months after of the murky and often criminal world of international
the outcome of the initial investigation was shared, a antiquities—as well as recoup some of the expense
new scandal broke out for the Green family and the involved in making reparations to other countries—
Museum of the Bible which had opened in Hobby Lobby sued former Oxford University classics
November 2017. According to an article in the professor Dirk Obbink on June 2, 2021, for $7
October 2018 Business Insider, the Museum admitted million for his role in this ongoing kerfuffle. Obbink
that third-party testing on what was purported as Repatriated Clay Cuneiform Tablet was hired to curate artifacts for its planned Museum.
authentic fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls revealed the artifacts were fake The 10-page filing made at the U.S. District Plaintiff Hobby Lobby asserts
and likely modern forgeries. This discovery resulted in the removal of claims for fraud and breach of contract in connection with its purchase of
five fragments from the exhibit area at that time. Since then, all of the ancient papyri fragments (the ‘Fragments’) from Dirk D. Obbink
Museum’s Dead Sea Scroll collection have been identified as fakes with (‘Obbink’).” According to news.artnet.com, “In December 2017, Obbink
further investigation taking place into how they were forged. told the company that he had ‘mistakenly’ sold artifacts from his employ-
On March 27, 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported the Greens er’s [Oxford University] holdings in one of the transactions, for a total of
were to return another 11,500 antiquities to Iraq and Egypt. Green $760,000. When Obbink failed to pay Hobby Lobby back—he made just
stated he “is helping his family’s collection to coordinate the return of one $10,000 payment, according to the lawsuit—a Museum of the Bible
around 5,000 ancient papyrus fragments and 6,500 ancient clay objects representative met with the Egyptian Exploration Society in 2019. It was
because the artifacts lack reliable provenance or ownership histories.” then, the suit claims, that the museum realized everything he had sold was
actually stolen.” Stay tuned.
Below: a few of the dead sea scroll fragments determined to be false. “After an
exhaustive review of all the imaging and scientific analysis results, it is evident that Under a microscope, there were several dead giveaways—first of all, the leather was
none of the textual fragments in Museum of the Bible's Dead Sea Scroll collection very bumpy and rough. “It was obvious to us that the scribe had a very difficult time
are authentic,” said the head of the investigation, Colette Loll of Art Fraud Insights, writing on the surface, unlike the clean smooth parchment that would have been
in a statement. used 2,000 years ago,” Colette Loll of Art Fraud Insights explained.
More damningly, a close examination showed that the writing had been applied to a
surface that was already fragmented—the ink dripped over the sides and fell into
cracks that wouldn’t have existed when the leather was new.

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