Really old money

What probably seemed foolish then wasn't much of a gamble in retrospect. Hicham grew up collecting Greek and Near Eastern seals, and Ali, ancient coins, so it wasn't difficult for them to see the value in even the smallest relics of antiquity.

"That was such a gift from our father," Hicham says, "the appreciation of little things, with exquisite carving, or exquisite detail." Much of what Ali bought at Christie's that day has since sold for double or triple the original price, with some of the finest pieces still in the brothers' collection.

"We're buying so much all the time," Ali says, "but it's because these things will not come back. Most people don't understand, but when you feel that you are not going to see something like this again, you try as much as you can to get it. Sometimes more than you can."

It's a philosophy that's also passed down from their father, whose business was known for its aggressive acquisitiveness. When they inherited the business after losing their parents, the brothers carried on in this tradition, but the secretive world of antiquities dealers was undergoing a transformation that made old practices anathema. And Phoenix Ancient Art, as the brothers now called it, ran into some very public trials.

In 2004, Hicham pleaded guilty in a federal court in New York City to a misdemeanor, and received a $5,000 fine, for misrepresenting the country of origin of an artifact he took through U.S. Customs. The same year Ali was sentenced in absentia by an Egyptian court to 15 years in prison for alleged involvement in a smuggling ring. (The case was eventually dropped for lack of evidence.)

Today the family business is very different. Phoenix, once an appointment-only gallery, now has offices open to the public in New York and Geneva. It publishes glossy catalogs and offers curated exhibitions of its collections. Determined to transform their public image, the Aboutaams have courted the press, spoken out in favor of regulation, and worked to broaden their client base.

"We just sold a $150,000 piece over the web," Hicham says. "We never met. The buyer just wired the money, and we sent the piece. That's it."

The most crucial development at Phoenix, though, has been their new guarantee: So we sold you a million-dollar artifact whose provenance turns out to be false? Return it for a full refund! (Even if, in these pro-provenance times, we won't be able to give it away for free now.)

"You want a dealer who'll stand behind the pieces and anticipate potential issues," says Peter Chavkin, a partner at the law firm Mintz Levin, who has worked with the Aboutaams and others in the antiquities field, "and the Aboutaams have the wonderful approach of not sticking collectors with a piece that turns out to have problems."

The revamped business model has Phoenix doing better than ever before. Insiders say it has traditionally done more business in antiquities than Sotheby's and Christie's combined, and though Sotheby's record sales of the bronze Artemis and Guennol lioness in 2007 will change that, Phoenix also had a banner 2007. Last year the gallery sold 12 pieces for more than $1 million each, compared with just two in 2005. (By comparison, Sotheby's sold no antiquities for more than $1 million in 2006, and six in 2007, four from a single museum collection put up for auction.)

When it comes to appreciation, Phoenix's numbers hold up as well. In 2001 the gallery sold a Cycladic marble idol - a 4,000- to 5,000-year-old form known for its abstract lines - from Greece to a private collector for $340,000. In 2007, Phoenix sold another Cycladic idol, of similar quality but one inch shorter, for $950,000 - almost triple the comparable sale.

And the business continues to grow. Last year Phoenix sold to more private collectors than museum clients, and the Aboutaams estimate that 25% to 30% of those private clients were new - a marked shift from the fixed, closed group of collectors and museums that have traditionally made up their business.

What's more, expertise like the Aboutaams' is becoming increasingly advantageous. The stemmed antiquities supply has encouraged sellers to put more average specimens on the block, sometimes obscuring the standouts in an auction catalog.

"Auction houses don't necessarily know the value of the great masterpieces," Hicham says. "They're good at the average pieces, but they're not used to handling the top works. This is why when I hear the estimate at $100,000 for something I'm pursuing, I go with a budget of a million. That means something. That means what I'm seeing is not what they're seeing."

At a Sotheby's auction last year, a head of Hercules came up with a presale estimate of $20,000 to $30,000. Ali grabbed it for $300,000, a sum Hicham later called "ridiculous" - as in ridiculously low. Why? Because having grown up collecting ancient coins, Ali quickly identified the head as one of the Roman Emperor Commodus representing himself as Hercules, which made it considerably more valuable.

But the mere presence of these artifacts on the licit market is a sign of antiquities' potential. "There are antiquities available for purchase that are considered among the finest five in the world," Hicham says. "Compare that to an Impressionist painting or the Old Masters, where the top 20 or 30 are off the market - in public institutions - and it's obvious why there's so much interest in antiquities."

By all accounts, despite the fact that most newly excavated antiquities will be off-limits, some great works are still in private hands and could yet appear on the market. Much of the collection the Vatican has been building for more than five centuries - all of which it couldn't possibly display - is just sitting in its storerooms.

Jasper Gaunt, given the opportunity to study some of it, was only the second person to see it in 40 years. And recently Ali Aboutaam returned from a surreal visit to a Delaware family's warehouse: "We were seeing this amazing collection, all in boxes, with cheap furniture and bottles everywhere, like a junk shop. And then in all of that, there are just these gems."

Though the American wealthy have historically dabbled in antiquities, the field has been largely unknown to most U.S. citizens. And not just for financial reasons. In Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world, ancient history is never far from modern life; Americans just don't live that way. So it has taken U.S. collectors longer to connect with antiquity, and some would argue that the connection many feel now is owed in large part to all the titillating bad press.

But the marketplace is changing. When the Artemis sold at Sotheby's last year, the auction room was full. There were the people you'd expect - bespectacled dealers cradling catalogs and brandishing paddles - and many others too: middle-aged couples in loungewear, a hyperactive grade-schooler with his blond mom, even a dealer who'd had too many drinks at lunch and spent much of the auction fondling the wares in a disturbing fashion.

The objects on display, far from sequestered and secure, were spread around the room, being looked at and leaned on. Someone had discarded a couple of Coke cans and a Cheetos bag behind a sarcophagus. Hardly a stodgy affair, the auction had the appearance of an all-American afternoon out.

And that's as it should be, says Hicham: "There are more and more Americans - all sorts of different classes and types of Americans - traveling throughout the world, going to museums, visiting old Europe, bringing these interests home with them, and wanting to learn more. They go see these things and think, 'Wow, it can be this beautiful?' It's grassroots. It's exciting."

Americans' historical detachment may even help make them smarter buyers. "American collectors are very enthusiastic and intuitive," says Gordian Weber, a second-generation German antiquities dealer and an archaeologist. "Their intuition to invest in quality, not so much in history, is always right. While in Europe we'll always have the historical collector who'll buy a piece because it shows a certain aspect of this, or was collected by that family - when it's still a terrible piece - for you, quality is essence."

There is something at work here that emperors, tomb raiders, and Englishmen seem to have known forever. "A great work of art is great the moment that it's made," says Michael Bennett, curator of Greek and Roman art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. "When you look back over thousands of years, a thing that has always been great will be great today, and it will be great a thousand years from now. So antiquities aren't as speculative as some areas of the art market. But there's more to it than that. There's a feeling when you're looking at one of these pieces that you're looking directly into history."

So if, on the arc of investments, a Jeff Koons sculpture is Google stock, then an ancient work is perhaps most like the family home - an asset whose monetary value may rise or, ahem, fall, but whose intrinsic worth reaches far beyond the market.

"It's not that I'm so interested in the market being lower or the market being high," says Steinhardt. "I just hope that the piece I really care for comes my way. As a collector, I am shepherding this stuff for a brief period, and what's going to happen when I'm gone? It'll wind up in a public institution. So, what was the tragedy? That it was in my living room for 15 years before it went there?"

People like Steinhardt tend to be not just collectors but also students and stewards. They fund research, endow galleries, and eventually bequeath their artifacts to museums.

It's easy to understand why, listening to Jasper Gaunt. While every new construction project in Italy or Greece may yield another ancient vase, that piece will go into one of those countries' museums. But outside Gaunt's museum in Atlanta, there isn't another piece of ancient art on public display for hundreds of miles.

So when he sees a visitor transported by a glimpse of the ancient world, the importance of these works - and the people who collect and protect them - becomes clear. "If you take $57 million and you ring Mr. Damien Hirst's doorbell, you don't get much, frankly," Gaunt says. And should Hirst's shark even hold up for 5,000 years, it remains to be seen if the value would too. But, for a fraction of the price, you could become the curator of something great - right now.  

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