RESPONSE TO UNWARRANTED SEIZURE OF LEGALLY ACQUIRED ARTEFACTS

In what is claimed to be the first application of the Norwegian Cultural Heritage Act section 23c, the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (Økokrim) today (3 September 2021) has seized a large number of legally acquired and provenanced artefacts in the Schøyen Collection.

The unwarranted seizure was prompted by unevidenced claims by Iraqi authorities that unspecified objects have been smuggled out of that country. No proof of connection of those missing objects and the provenanced items in the Schøyen Collection has so far been presented.

Dr Martin Schøyen, the well-respected collector who began his collection more than half a century ago, said: “The provenance of the manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection, including those wrongly claimed by Iraq, provide clear evidence of my legal ownership. Today’s seizure is totally unwarranted.”

The Schøyen Collection is in cordial discussion with Økokrim on the matter.

DETAILED BACKGROUND

Iraq has demanded that around 100 cuneiform tablets from the Schøyen Collection be sent to Iraq on the unevidenced claim that in their opinion there is a possibility that they may have been illegally exported from Iraq. In fact, several of these tablets do not even come from Iraq, but from Iran and other countries.

Since the Desert Storm war in 1990, and especially after 2003, Iraq has been plagued by sharply increased looting of its cultural treasures, which have then been carried out illegally. This is a loss to that country and the Schøyen Collection has been wholly sympathetic to attempts to find and return artefacts stolen as a result of the disorder created by warfare.

All such illegally removed artefacts should be returned to Iraq without delay. However, no such artefacts can be found in the Schøyen Collection. Items in the Schøyen Collection were collected well before that time, from 1955. Most items were bought at auction and are well provenanced.

Wedge tablets were acquired in 1988 when the famous Erlenmeyer collection was sold at Christie's in London. That collection included pictographic tablets from around 3000 BC, Old Babylonian royal chronicles from around 1800 BC and more. Five of the world's largest museums and as well as private collectors bid for those items, many of which were acquired by the Schøyen Collection. This auction sale was a legal event that could be held precisely because the provenance or ownership conditions had been satisfactorily recorded before the Schøyen Collection (and other buyers) acquired the manuscripts in the Erlenmeyer collection which was started as early as 1943.

Most of the items in the Schøyen collection have provenance from old respected collections such as Cumberland Clark, Bournemouth (1920s to 1941), Lord Amherst of Hackney (1894-1909) and Simmonds collection, UK (1944-1987). These collectors acquired their cuneiform tablets in the Near East over an extended period from the late 19^th century to to the interwar period in the early 20^th century.

This is the accurate background not only to the provenanced items in the Schøyen Collection, but also to the provenanced items from the Middle East and North Africa in the world’s leading museums. There is no basis for Iraq's demand for provenanced and legally acquired items.

More information about ownership history and archaeological sites can be found on the collection's website www.schoyencollection.com under "Statement of Provenance."

There is also more information about Dr Martin Schøyen’s longstanding and transparent commitment to the global preservation of human heritage from all cultures and eras "History and Future".