The Murky Provenance of the Newest Sappho
Special Issue on the Papyrus Thefts
The sensational allegations swirling around Dirk Obbink and the illicit removal of Oxyrhynchus papyri from the collection of the Egypt Exploration Society have rightly drawn the attention of major media outlets. But despite Obbink’s denial, this is not the first time in recent years that controversy has arisen around his activities: the EES admits in its October 14 statement that it had concerns already in August 2016, when it elected not to reappoint Obbink as a General Editor of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri series. This decision, it states, was made “primarily because of unsatisfactory discharge of his editorial duties, but also because of concerns, which he did not allay, about his alleged involvement in the marketing of ancient texts, especially the Sappho text” (our stress).
The tale of Obbink and what the EES calls “the Sappho text” dovetails well with what is known about the current scandal. If, as is alleged, Obbink sold EES material to Hobby Lobby Stores in a pair of batches in 2010, and was able to do so at that time without verifying or being required to verify their provenance — as would appear to be the case based on the descriptions in the 2013 contract for sale of the so-called “first-century Mark” fragment, which prompted the EES’s investigation in the first place — then there is a precedent for him asserting, purely on the basis of his own scholarly expertise, the authenticity and origin of a manuscript on the antiquities market. Similar circumstances surround Obbink’s 2014 announcement of the discovery of new poetry by Sappho on a papyrus (= P.Sapph.Obbink) now in the possession of an anonymous collector. Not only do the two share several key figures and institutions, but so too do both cases raise serious issues of papyrological and scholarly ethics, which are not always adequately addressed — in media coverage or scholarship. The overlap, it turns out, is significant — so much so that the context of the current allegations can’t be fully understood without reference to P.Sapph.Obbink.
The disparity in how the two episodes have been framed is especially illuminating. In the present, the allegations themselves are the story, and these have prompted no small amount of outrage. But in 2014, the media narrative was fixated on the discovery itself — NEW SAPPHO! — and the primary scholarly audience for the announcement (namely, specialists in Greek lyric) was similarly consumed by the poetry itself. The lack of information about the ownership and origins of the papyrus were only an element of the story, and concerns about them were not shared by all. Literary folk were for the most part either unaware of the many troubling uncertainties surrounding the papyrus or (less charitably) simply disinterested in the circumstances of Obbink’s discovery, a fact which should inform any hand-wringing in the face of the current allegations. The recent news of Obbink’s alleged thefts have implications that go well beyond a handful of biblical fragments. In concert with the story of P.Sapph.Obbink, the scandal goes to the heart of the discipline of Classics as currently configured and the ethics of how we study the ancient world.
In 2014, as at present, Obbink and papyri made international headlines, though in the case of the Sappho discovery it was because of the scale of the find. Sappho’s work survives principally in fragments, many of them quite small. But the first of the two fragmentary poems preserved on this papyrus (a previously unknown work dubbed “the Brothers Poem” by Obbink) extends for some twenty lines — five complete Sapphic stanzas — which immediately placed it amongst the longest continuous examples of her poetry.
Although word of the discovery was circulating in scholarly circles in late 2013, to most of us (and to the public at large) it surfaced more or less out of thin air in late January 2014 with a Daily Beast article, the release of a website and blog for discussion, as well as a draft of the scholarly edition. The flurry of scholarly activity prompted by the news was no less impressive than the response in major media: specialists quickly seized the chance to weigh in, and in early 2016, a large edited collection on the subject appeared — a remarkably prompt turnaround in the world of scholarly publishing.
Yet however exciting the discovery was, Obbink’s announcement also raised eyebrows. His draft article, which was quickly pulled from the internet, made absolutely no mention of the papyrus’ origins, acquisition, and ownership history — details that typically fall under the umbrella term ‘provenance’ — save that it was now in a private collection. (Like we said — out of thin air!) While it is evidently possible to purchase antiquities on the grey or black market with a blind eye to their origins, it is simply unheard of to publish a papyrus without discussing its provenance in a modern edition, not least because of the potential for foul play — forgery, looting, or illicit export, to name a few — but also for basic reasons of scholarly transparency and due diligence.
The response was immediate. The same day, archaeologist Paul Barford authored a blog post lampooning the discovery with a headline worthy of the Onion: “No-Questions-Asking UK Academic Reads a Freshly-Uncovered Ripped-up Papyrus from Unknown Source.” Obbink’s draft edition disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared, and in its wake came an ostensibly well sourced Sunday Times article by Bettany Hughes on February 2, which answered some questions but raised many more. The chorus of scholarly indignation grew louder, and Francesca Tronchin posed the question about provenance directly in a comment on the official discussion blog for the fragments.
Obbink’s response came in three stages. The first was a February 5 article in the TLS in which he effectively re-announced the discovery. Here he offered the first version of what would prove to be an evolving narrative of the papyrus’ origins, claiming that “[t]he authenticity of the ancient mummy cartonnage panel, from which the papyrus was extracted, having been recycled in antiquity to accompany a burial, has been established through its documented legal provenance.” His invocation of radiocarbon dating, the results of which have been neither published nor verified, and his insistence on the papyrus’ “documented legal provenance” did little to address the criticism he was facing: beyond the fact that no documentation was actually offered to confirm the papyrus’ “legal provenance,” the details of the claim seemed to contradict information that had already been supplied.
The clamor of concerned academics continued, even crossing over into the mainstream media via a March 2 op-ed in the New York Times linking Obbink’s silence on questions of provenance to the proliferation of black-market antiquities trading in the wake of the Arab Spring. Yet when Obbink’s editio princeps was finally published a few months later, there was still no mention of provenance. Instead, in a footnote, Obbink promised to discuss “the conservation” of the papyrus in a separate study, citing reasons of space. But conservation, of course, is not the same thing as provenance, and Obbink again fell victim to accusations that he was ducking the question. The wait continued.
The second stage of Obbink’s response came eleven months after his initial announcement, at the January 2015 SCS/AIA meeting in New Orleans: in a paper delivered by Skype (and subsequently published in the 2016 edited volume), he addressed at last the issue of provenance, based on statements by the papyrus’ “anonymous owner” who, Obbink reported, had dissolved the cartonnage, with the aid of his “staff … in a warm water solution.” (p. 35): rather than coming from a mummy, the cartonnage was, in fact “domestic or industrial cartonnage” such as that used “for a book-cover or bookbinding” (p. 35). In addition to this new description of the now destroyed (and, hence, unverifiable) cartonnage, Obbink also asserted that the papyri were formerly in the collection of David M. Robinson, who bequeathed (some of) them to the library at the University of Mississippi. From there, Obbink stated, they were deaccessioned and offered for sale in a November 2011 Christie’s auction. The story appears to establish legitimacy: Robinson’s collection is known to have left Egypt before the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, and the Christie’s auction catalogue is consistent, in broad outline if not in detail, with Obbink’s description. But, to date, none of these claims has been independently verified; the evidence is principally Obbink’s word.
A few weeks later, in his third attempt to address the growing controversy, Obbink granted a series of interviews to Live Science, which resulted in a balanced article which explored the ethical and scholarly issues at stake while giving Obbink an opportunity to rebut his critics (and to introduce new inconsistencies into his evolving story, such as the claim that the Robinson collection inventory number was still attached to the now disassembled papyrus). While still declining to offer any verifiable documentation of provenance, Obbink nonetheless asserted that “There’s no question in my mind about where the piece came from … I can absolutely guarantee that there’s no question about that” — a claim that is all the more difficult to credit in light of the allegations Obbink currently faces.
Given the standing that Obbink (then) enjoyed, his explanations were sufficient to settle the matter for many — if they were bothered at all. A raft of publications on the new poems soon began to explore the works in their sixth-century Lesbian context, confident that their primary import was now safely situated in the “ancient” rather than “modern” world. But the revisions to the official story did not go unnoticed, particularly inasmuch as they contradicted aspects of Bettany Hughes’ Sunday Times article. Even more serious were the red flags in the story for those familiar with the shadier sides of the antiquities trade. The same lot of Robinson papyri from the November 2011 Christie’s auction had also been invoked by the Green Collection to establish the provenance of another, seemingly unrelated, papyrus, one which had been offered for sale on eBay by a known trafficker of black-market antiquities. There is ample evidence of sales by “respectable” auction houses being used to falsely establish the legality of recently surfaced or otherwise unprovenanced antiquities. Given how much remains unclear about the Robinson papyri in general and the specific objects included in the Christie’s sale, there is good reason to suspect that this detail of Obbink’s account is a convenient smokescreen for allaying concerns about a papyrus whose origins were either unsavory or could not otherwise be adequately documented.
Nor is its acquisition in the same auction lot as texts in the Green Collection the only connection between P.Sapph.Obbink and the Hobby Lobby fortune. As is the case with the current allegations against Obbink, the Greens are not peripheral players in the tale of the newest Sappho. It turns out that “twenty smaller fragments” recovered from the cartonnage were “deemed insignificant” and sold off, eventually making their way into the Green Collection in Oklahoma City (p. 36). These fragments (= P.GC inv. 105, frr. 1–4) were published by Obbink, together with Simon Burris and Jeffrey Fish, “as part of the Green Scholars Initiative” in the same issue of ZPE as P.Sapph.Obbink.
The circumstances of the cartonnage’s dispersal remain difficult to understand: although admittedly small, the Green Collection fragments are hardly “insignificant” by scholarly standards, nor does it take a particularly well-trained eye to determine that they belong to the same roll as P.Sapph.Obbink — a connection which would have been especially obvious if they were extracted from the same mass of cartonnage. Furthermore, as Brent Nongbri has noted, the necessary timeline in this tale of purchase, dissolution, and resale requires exceptionally swift action at each stage, with all transactions taking place within the space of roughly two months.
Even before the EES’s allegations against Obbink, it was hard to shake the suspicion that the Greens’ involvement in the tale of P.Sapph.Obbink was an indication of something unsavory. Although Obbink had also sold them papyri of known provenance, past acquisitions of antiquities by Hobby Lobby for the Greens’ Museum of the Bible have been shrouded in controversy, most notably an attempt to import looted and smuggled material from Iraq that ultimately required a settlement with the Department of Justice. The scale of their acquisitions, moreover, makes it likely that the Museum of the Bible’s collection includes additional material of dubious provenance. One can’t help but think of Chippindale’s law: “however bad you feared it would be (as far as antiquities looting and smuggling are concerned), it always turns out worse.”
Although much about the recent history of the “newest” Sappho papyri remains a subject of speculation, concerns were raised long before the EES’s allegations were made, and the fact that we know anything at all about the provenance of this object is due to the indefatigable work of papyrologists unwilling to take Obbink’s protean claims at face value. In a series of posts over several months, Roberta Mazza investigated various aspects of the acquisition and continues to offer insight, especially into the activities of Scott Carroll, who was Director of the Green Collection until 2012. More recently, Brent Nongbri’s blog has produced voluminous research into Obbink, the Green Collection, the EES collection, and papyri of uncertain provenance. With some notable exceptions, such as the coverage by David Meadows of Rogue Classicism, this detective work has been undertaken by biblical scholars, whose interest in the dating of the so-called “first-century Mark” has led them to scrutinize Obbink and the Greens’ cavalier treatment of provenance.
But why has this topic, which has remained the subject of particular interest to scholars of early Christianity, not similarly exercised scholars of ancient Greek poetry? Even though the ethical challenges posed by the reality of a market in antiquities in the present are complex, and even though papyrology — and literary papyrology in particular — has long been weak on archaeology, a text cannot be wholly divorced from the medium on which it is preserved. Yet it seems that, for many, once the “authenticity” of the papyrus’ texts as genuine works of Sappho had been satisfactorily established, the history of the physical object ceased to matter — even if we no longer know where to find it! Thus the BMCR review of the 2016 edited volume devoted to the newest Sappho poems omitted any discussion whatsoever of questions of provenance, save a brief comment that the editorial board felt “obliged” to insert as a header. The “recovery” of even the slightest scrap — let alone a trove including a nearly complete, previously unknown poem — is, so the reasoning seems to go, to be celebrated no matter the means by which it is achieved.
The scope of Obbink’s alleged activities on the antiquities market would seem to put the lie to this reasoning. But it should also serve as a prompt for more concerted reflection on whether the current scandal simply reflects the isolated actions of a single bad actor. The discipline of Classics has, for the most part, abetted Obbink’s past behavior through our silence, and so we are all to some degree implicated in his misconduct. With the benefit of hindsight, it is relatively easy to identify missed opportunities. The editors of the ZPE, for example, should have insisted on a frank and thorough accounting of the papyrus’ origins before accepting the edition for publication. Likewise, scholars publishing on the new poems should have considered the recent history of their discovery before turning their attention to the ancient world. If we are shocked by the current allegations, we should also acknowledge they are, at least in part, the product of our discipline’s longstanding collective indifference to the provenance of “literary” artefacts. Less obvious, however, is how this scandal should inform our actions moving forward. We hope that the current revelations will amplify for philologists the discussion about the ethics of publishing new texts which is well underway in art history and archaeology. In addition to vociferously condemning any future “discoveries” of unprovenanced papyri, we need to develop clear guidelines about the appropriate scholarly treatment of already published texts of dubious origin, of which the Brothers Poem is only the most recent and flagrant example.
But the still-emerging details of this story also require us to take another look at how the ethical landscape of the study of Classics extends beyond the traditional boundaries of our field, not only in antiquity, but today. The American Society of Papyrologists’ Resolution Concerning the Illicit Trade in Papyri, for example, builds on the premise that the trade in papyri and other antiquities encourages looting and, therefore, the destruction of the archaeological record. It also acknowledges that this trade “often involves the removal and commercial exploitation of cultural heritage.” The present impacts on our recovery of the past, and from this perspective, not only must one bear in mind what has been irretrievably lost during the past decade of political instability and violence in the Middle East, but also the capitalist exploitation of such crises by those like the Greens and, in his capacity as an antiquities dealer, Obbink. We may think that Sappho and the Lesbian song culture of the sixth century B.C.E offers a scholarly retreat from the world around us; one lesson of this scandal is that we could not be more wrong.
C. Michael Sampson is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Manitoba and a Research Associate of its Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics.
Anna Uhlig is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of California, Davis.
Update (1.30.2020): According to Mike Holmes (Museum of the Bible), the Sappho fragments in the Green Collection were purchased from Yakup Eksioglu (AKA ‘MixAntik’) on January 7, 2012. Eksioglu is the same Turkish trader that we referred to in our article as having offered a papyrus for sale (on eBay in 2012) that the Green Collection later claimed had been part of the 2011 Christies lot of Robinson papyri. Holmes’ detailed report is available on Brent Nongbri’s blog. It is as yet unclear how this new information pertains to the provenance of P.Sapph.Obbink.
