Really old money

"The state of the discussion between archaeologists and museum curators and directors is so polarized that it has ceased almost entirely to be productive," says archaeologist Geoff Emberling, who is also museum director of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, whose museum specifically does not acquire pieces on the market.

Emberling calls the lioness sale a "catastrophe," saying that prices at this level put archaeological sites in greater danger than they have ever been before. "In the big picture," he says, those artifacts "are better off still in the ground, awaiting a detailed excavation. But I acknowledge that's sort of a dream."

In the meantime, the question of who owns antiquity persists. Is it the farmer who stumbles on an ancient piece of silver while tilling his field? Or the government that demands he turn it over as state property? Or the cultural descendants of the civilization that made it? Or the criminal who spirits it away into hiding? Or the collector who eventually buys it? Or the museum that receives it in someone's will? No one at all - or everyone?

Jasper Gaunt could be the Platonic form of a Ph.D. Pensive gaze, salt-and-pepper shag, soft leather briefcase clutched in his lap, he looks as though he's been thinking about history since he was 5. And actually, he sort of has.

Born in Rome with an archaeologist for a grandmother, he says the Forum was the only place to play. So it wasn't a shock when he decided to pursue his doctorate in vase painting, and today he's the curator of Greek and Roman art at Emory University's Michael C. Carlos Museum in suburban Atlanta.

"There are lots and lots of stories of people bankrupting themselves and going nuts about collecting things," he says. "One of the world's earliest panel paintings belonged to Gyges, one of the kings of Lydia in the seventh century. And he paid what was at the time a record price. Pliny tells us it was staggering."

What we consider antiquities today began traveling the world as ancient empires were built and trade routes opened. As early as 2750 B.C., the Sumerians were collecting Persian and Egyptian works. The Emperor Hadrian collected from Greece and Egypt in the early second century. The Vatican began formally displaying its collections in the 16th century and subsequently pushed for measures to protect and build its stores, including new excavations. (Gaunt is cracked up by correspondence between the second earl of Shelburne and his agent in Rome: "The question was, 'Something was found - does the Pope get it?' ")

Conflict went hand in hand with collection. No sooner did the earl of Elgin Thomas Bruce remove his Marbles from the Parthenon during the Ottoman occupation of Greece in the early 1800s than some of his contemporaries began calling him a vandal. (Lord Byron, in fact, wrote a stern poem in protest.) And it's said that after Howard Carter discovered King Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922, his team used sharp tools to remove the Pharaoh's death mask and adornments, leaving his mummy in 18 scattered pieces. No wonder they were cursed.

The problems endured into modern times. For every artifact with a documented history of legal ownership and sale, dozens more are supposedly from an "old European collection" or some similarly suspicious source. They are the ones governments are likely to pounce on. As former Greek culture minister Giorgos Voulgarakis told London's Guardian newspaper in 2006, "Whatever is Greek, wherever in the world, we want it back."

Gaunt isn't swayed. "Is that constructive?" he asks. "It's political, and a total PR campaign." For Greeks outside Greece, he says, it denies any access to their heritage, and perhaps worse, stymies the cross-cultural understanding museums are built upon.

Still, today repatriation is the rule: Institutions including the J. Paul Getty Museum in L.A., the Metropolitan, and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts have sent disputed pieces back home, and without going to court. But if all the drama sounds like a deterrent to collectors with scruples, Gaunt says it shouldn't.

"No museum would be anywhere without our collectors' backing," he says. "Coming from Europe, I'm deeply impressed by the way in which American museums reach out to the community. And it's paid for by very wealthy patrons, in a brilliant manner. And, yes, there's all the hype - to spend the money and have your name on labels and galleries - but it's done for the greater good. It really is."

Whatever the antiquities trade's troubles, not everyone is shocked by what's happened. Brothers Hicham and Ali Aboutaam have been surrounded by antiquities since they were toddlers, traveling the world with their father as he bought and sold artifacts for his successful Beirut business. Once they were old enough to join in, it wasn't long before they'd earned a reputation for something like recklessness.

"I remember there was an auction in London," says Ali, who's known for being the quiet older brother with a wild buying streak. "I was 25 years old, wearing a jean jacket, and it was an auction of really tiny things. I was trying to buy the whole thing - everything."

As the Christie's auctioneer brought the gavel down to such unprecedented proclamations as, "Sold to the gentleman in the denim jacket," Ali continued outbidding even his most enthusiastic competition, going so far as to pay £14,000 - or 70 times the estimate - for a piece listed at £200 to £400.

" 'This is a record!' - the auctioneer was making comments like this," he says, laughing. "Then my friend who worked with us went to collect the pieces and check what was worth the £400,000 I'd spent. He could put everything in his hand."

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