Author Becomes the Sam Spade of Papyrologists, Resulting in a Gripping, Insightful Book

‘Stolen Fragments: Black Markets, Bad Faith, and the Illicit Trade in Ancient Artefacts’By Roberta MazzaRedwood Press, 272 PagesImagine Janet Malcolm, known for forensic takedowns of journalism and biography, had been a trained papyrologist — able to decipher bits of ancient writing, sometimes no larger than a postage stamp — determined to expose the unethical and sometimes illegal trade in ancient writings that has been going on ever since the first excavations in Egypt and other sites. This gives you some idea about Roberta Mazza’s gripping and insightful book.Like Malcolm, who died in 2021, Ms. Mazza wants to know about provenance — in this case how it is that on January 16, 2012, at Baylor University, “a sturdy white-haired man” in his early 60s, Scott Carroll, director of the Green Collection of ancient artefacts, put on a show of dissolving a mummy head in soapy water that revealed papyri of early Christian writing as well as poetry by Sappho, available for centuries only in small fragments. Thus begins the story of a cast of characters that includes Steve Green, president of a craft store chain, Hobby Lobby, and founder of the Museum of the Bible, who had millions of dollars to spend on acquiring mainly biblical papyri that he wanted to display as proof of his Evangelical interpretation of the Bible; and Dirk Obbink, a heralded papyrologist who had conflicts of interest galore, including using his position as an Oxford don to peddle and profit from the so-called discoveries that Dr. Carroll and his ilk purveyed to hapless buyers like Mr. Green, who never inquired about their provenance. To call Dr. Carroll white-haired and sturdy is not some perfunctory effort of a writer to make her narrative more engaging. On the contrary, it is Dr. Carroll’s air of authority at Baylor that masks his unethical destruction of that mummy head to get at what is inside, which turns out, in the end, not to have been inside the head but to have been planted there, taken from where no one can say because the provenance of the Sappho texts and others has been irrevocably destroyed. Ms. Mazza’s story, though, is not just about some small group of perfidious dealers and scholars of antiquities who duped Steve Green. It is about eBay, auction houses, academic institutions, and foundations that have despoiled an ancient heritage even while claiming to save and preserve it. You don’t have to be a papyrologist to know that any testimony or text you rely on has to be vetted. Who is telling the story and why, and how do you know it is authentic? Mr. Green asked no such questions; auction houses like Christie’s did not inquire very deeply into what they wanted to sell; eBay has no staff to assess what it sells; and most professors have been concerned only with the texts that they will publish and that will earn them tenure, promotion, and academic fame. This is what Ms. Mazza’s story exposes. What makes “Stolen Fragments” such a fascinating and edifying read is that it is about Ms. Mazza’s own education in becoming a detective, the Sam Spade of papyrologists, in sizing up the persons and the stories they tell, as she learns how to question witnesses to the destruction of provenance. They would have revealed that so much of what is sold is stolen goods, with bogus certifications of provenance to evade the law and the uncomfortable questions of a Roberta Mazza, who in her story has few partners she can rely on. Are you wondering who vetted Ms. Mazza? That Redwood Press is an imprint of Stanford University Press is not enough to sanction her work. After all, her own point is that institutions of higher learning and museums have been complicit in the trafficking of stolen goods. So I turned to James Keenan, a retired, independent, and highly respected papyrologist, and an honest man.Mr. Keenan reviewed Ms. Mazza’s book in the TLS (January 31, 2025), and he confirms her findings and adds the sobering conclusion that “the book leaves me wondering how many of us papyrologists are immaculate.” Some are, but others have a lot to answer for, having created a world in which Sappho, in Jeannette Winterson’s novel “Art & Lies,” exclaims: “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY POEMS?”Mr. Rollyson’s work in progress is “Sappho’s Fire: Kindling the Modern World.”

Author Becomes the Sam Spade of Papyrologists, Resulting in a Gripping, Insightful Book

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