Cultural Colonialism at the Museum of the Bible: Have They Found Redemption?
Part Two
Kathryn Prinkey
Citation: Prinkey, Kathryn. “Cultural Colonialism at the Museum of the Bible: Have They Found Redemption?” The Coalition of Master’s Scholars on Material Culture, January 28, 2022.
Abstract: The Museum of the Bible (opened 2017) has been a popular topic in the news for its many collecting missteps. Most of these errors are associated with the Green Family Collection, donated by the Green family headed by Steve Green, whose father founded Hobby Lobby. The evangelical businessman collected for more than a decade with the intention of opening a museum. With that vision turned reality, the family’s frenzy to collect biblical material to fit their specific narrative about the Bible has come under scrutiny. The Greens have purchased stolen and looted artifacts, bought forgeries, and even lied on U.S. Customs forms to import such materials. Although these actions are morally corrupt, and contrary to the Greens’ evangelical background, the family serves as more than a story of malpractice and unethical behavior. By using their private wealth to exploit the antiquities markets in areas of political unrest, the Greens exemplify contemporary cultural colonialism. In part two, I apply the theories explicated in part one to review two case studies about the Greens and the Museum of the Bible. These studies demonstrate their cultural colonial practices and the colonial matrices of power in the family’s collection dealings. The first case study regards the Greens’ illegally importation of artifacts from Iraq in 2011. The second case study concerns their collection of papyri obtained from an Oxford University professor. I end by contemplating how several countries in the Middle East, the main source and site of the Green family’s collection, are attempting to regain their agencies within these matrices of power dominated by the Greens.
Keywords: cultural colonialism, colonial matrices of power, Museum of the Bible, antiquities trafficking, forgeries
Case Studies:
2011: Iraqi Artifacts
In 2011, the Green family came under investigation by the federal government for a shipment labeled “clay tile samples” that US Borders and Customs confiscated. The shipment was one of many shipped from Israel and the United Arab Emirates to several Hobby Lobby locations across the US, although they were purchased independently by the Green family. The investigation concerned whether or not the family illicitly imported into the US “cultural heritage from Iraq.”[1] The Green family did not claim these items at Customs, and whether stolen or purchased legally, US federal law prohibits the import of artifacts originating in Iraq.[2]
The US federal law to “prohibit import of designated archaeological and ethnological materials from Iraq” was established in 2004.[3] The law was put into effect after the US invaded Iraq, consequentially prompting the looting and damaging of the National Museum in Baghdad. Sidi Ahmed Ould Ahmed Salem reported several years after that more than 220,000 pieces were taken, 4,795 of which were clay cylinder seals.[4] The damage to the museum and artifacts was extensive: “Of the 451 exhibition cabinets distributed over the 14 exhibition halls on the upper and lower floors of the museum, 28 cabinets were destroyed and left empty, their contents looted.” Salem classified three types of looters: those who know what items have high value to sell, those who are happy to take anything that might be of value, and those who want to destroy artifacts with the intention of erasing historical facts. In two out of three cases, the goal was to sell.[5] The purpose of the 2004 US law was to prevent the sale of such stolen artifacts and discourage further looting.
The settlement of the Greens’ case in July 2017 only received two days of media coverage.[6] And, although this 2011 case settled, the artifacts remain in limbo. Currently, the US Department of Justice maintains 5,500 artifacts, mostly cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals. The department is first holding a claim period for individuals, then, after this period, the state of Iraq can file a claim to have the artifacts returned to the government. With or without an individual claim, “the Justice Department will ultimately decide where the items go.”[7]
Whether the Greens were aware that the artifacts they attempted to import originated in Iraq is uncertain. The fact that they purposefully omitted claiming the objects on their customs forms indicates that they were likely trying to hide the artifacts, knowing full-well the consequences of their actions. Nevertheless, the Greens participated in an illicit trade made available to them by their capitalist wealth. Furthermore, they were prompted by their evangelical Christian mission to participate in such a trade. In this way, the Greens culturally colonized Iraqi artifacts, using their capital to acquire cultural properties to meet their own interests.
A further cultural colonial consequence of the Greens’ actions is that, by importing illicit artifacts from Iraq to the US, the Greens have eliminated the Iraqi government’s agency to determine the future of those objects. In terms of CMP, the Greens and the US courts now control the flow and future of the artifacts. The source nation has lost control over distribution of their cultural property. Now, the artifacts are entangled in the US legal system, and, for the most part, at the mercy of the US federal court system. Not only have processes of cultural colonialism displaced the objects from their home but relegated them into the unequal power dynamics between Euro-American imperial nation-states and historically colonized nations – a contemporary reproduction of CMP.
2012: Papyri
Another scandal that involves the Green family and MOTB concerns their purchase and study of papyri. The Green Family Collection has donated only a handful of papyri to the museum.[8] This is due in part to the scrutiny that the family and objects have received from media and academia over the papyri’s origins.
This case began when Ph.D. student at Concordia University in Montreal, Brice Jones, noticed one particular fragment of papyrus, allegedly a piece of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, for sale on eBay in 2012.[9] The seller operated in Turkey, and claimed that the fragment was from Egypt. After the fragment sold for $14,000, the account disappeared.[10] By selling on eBay, the seller was breaking the 1983 law that requires export licenses and approval of the state to export cultural property.[11] The seller was also selling the fragment without any documentation of its provenance. Furthermore, sale or purchase of such an item originating from Egypt violates Egyptian antiquity laws.[12]
In April 2014, the same fragment of papyrus appeared in an exhibition in Vatican City that the Green family and MOTB organized.[13] The catalogue did not mention the piece or its provenance.[14] At the time, David Trobisch was director of the Green Collection, and Moss and Baden questioned him about the fragment. He claimed that the Greens obtained the fragment from a trusted dealer and had provenance records dating back to 1980 at the University of Mississippi and the David M. Robinson Memorial Collection.[15] When Moss and Baden asked for documentation to support this claim, Trobisch could neither locate photographs in the university’s records nor provide catalogued evidence that the piece was at any point part of the collection. Trobisch continued to change stories about the piece, eventually connecting it to a Dr. Bill Noah. Moss and Baden contacted Noah, but Noah answered that he never owned it and that MOTB never contacted him.[16]
In November 2017, Director of the Museum of the Bible Scholars Initiative (est. 2012) Michael Holmes explained the papyrus fragment situation in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education: “It was bought from a dealer in good faith, and the dealer provided certain information. That information turned out to be incorrect.”[17] The interviewer, Tom Bartlett, added that, according to Holmes, “whether the dealer purchased the fragment on eBay is still unknown. As a result, he says, it won’t be seen in the museum.”[18]
In the summer of 2020, Ariel Sabar added to the eBay story and uncovered a new scandal concerning the papyri collection at MOTB.[19] In 2012, the aforementioned Carroll was working as head of acquisitions for the museum. Jerry Pattengale was the Executive Director of Education for MOTB Scholar’s Initiative. In search of scholars and artifacts, the pair traveled to London to meet with a leading scholar of papyri at Oxford University Dirk Obbink. Obbink had access to the world’s largest papyri collection owned by the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) housed at Oxford called Oxyrhynchus Papyri. [20]
Obbink connected Carroll and Pattengale to what they thought would be a sale. Obbink led them to Yakup Eksioglu who was a dealer from Turkey and had been selling alleged antiquities on eBay under various usernames since 2008.[21] Carroll and Pattengale decided not to purchase anything at that time.
However, Eksioglu did make sales to the Greens and MOTB, such as a January 2012 sale of Sappho pieces that were later used in classroom demonstrations at Baylor University. In July of 2012, a senior official from MOTB wrote to two other executives and said of Eksioglu: “You’re likely both aware that he’s been the main conduit for much of the best stuff surfacing.” To which one of them replied, “there-in is the potential issue…Where is it coming from?’”[22]
Sabar also uncovered that, in 2012, Obbink agreed to work with MOTB Scholar’s Initiative and advise purchases. While Obbink was advising the Greens on papyri purchases, he was also secretly one of the family’s biggest suppliers. Over a three-year period, Obbink sold more than 150 fragments of papyri to the Greens with a cost between four and eight million dollars.[23]
Obbink’s role at MOTB combined with his other scandalous dealings in the Sappho poems (see footnote) were concerning to EES.[24] Members of EES are prohibited from buying or selling antiquities.[25] In 2014, EES told Obbink to cut ties with the Greens or they would cut ties with him.[26] EES provided Obbink access to the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, so to lose his status with EES would mean to lose his standing as a leading scholar of papyri. Obbink decided to lie to EES and continued to work with the Greens.[27]
In 2015, Carroll was giving a lecture in a North Carolina church and mentioned that he had seen a fragment of papyrus from the Gospel of Mark from “an outstanding, well-known, eminent classicist… Dirk Obbink,” who thought the fragment of papyrus dated from the first century A.D., the same century most scholars believe that the Gospel was written. Obbink had shown Carroll and Pattengale the fragment in 2012 during their visit to London and offered to sell them the piece. Carroll’s lecture published on YouTube prompted the EES to review all of its unpublished New Testament papyri.[28] The EES found substantial evidence that the fragment was connected to their collection, and confronted Obbink who denied offering it for sale. The EES told Obbink to prepare the fragment for publication as soon as possible in order to avoid any further confusion about its date and content. This left Obbink in a bind as he had misdated the fragment to make it more appealing to the Greens – the piece turned out to actually be from the third or fourth century – and he “had sold Hobby Lobby not just the Mark papyrus, but also fragments of the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John.” He dated all four around the first century A.D., even though the fragments were from much later, the late second or early third centuries.[29]
The EES revoked Obbink’s membership and access to the papyri collection after their review found over 100 pieces of papyri and some catalog records missing. It turns out that Obbink had created a scam company with Eksioglu and sold the pieces to multiple collectors. A few of the fragments were photographed before being stolen. Some pieces were whole at Oxford but found in separate fragments among multiple collectors. Obbink was arrested on March 2, 2020, and remains at home until further investigation.[30]
The Greens gave back their stolen papyri without a legal fight and are pursuing Obbink for refunds.[31] Either way, this additional scandal regarding the collection evidences how the Greens go after the artifacts that they want and worry about legality and provenance later. Obbink, by stealing papyrus from the archive and selling it to the Greens, controlled and limited access to knowledge – a staple of cultural colonialism. Furthermore, the Green’s hunt for early biblical material and the funds that they possess to pay for such material, encouraged Obbink to steal and lie about the papyri. Obbink was in a privileged position with special access to the archive at Oxford. This layered system of power, money, and control over knowledge again replicates CMP. The matrix created within the tight circle of the Greens, Obbink, and a handful of other antiquities traders represents an elite group that control where and how papyri is traded, hoodwinking global institutions of learning like EES and leaving little room for the source nations, in this case Egypt.
Conclusion
Whether the controversy centers around illegal imports from Iraq or false papyri fragments, the Greens have maintained a legacy of participation in cultural colonial practices. Their desire to own the Bible and the artifacts associated with it has led them to much legal trouble. The 2011 illegally imported Iraqi artifacts demonstrate how the Greens use their wealth to acquire the heritage of others. Their actions have consequentially entangled these artifacts in the US government who will make the ultimate decision about where they end up. This leaves Iraq with little agency in the fate of these objects.
The Greens acted again as cultural colonizers by collecting papyrus under false pretenses. Obbink used his privilege to steal, and the Greens continued to lie about and accumulate papyrus for their personal agenda. Encouraged by their religious mission, the Greens destructed public access to these artifacts, important to a diversity of peoples. Like their dealings in Iraqi artifacts, the Greens gained control over the papyri artifacts, and now scholarly institutions and Egypt suffer the consequences.
The Green family and MOTB are attempting to correct their malpractice. They announced in 2020 that, after seeking reliable provenance for most of their collection, they will return 11,500 objects to the governments of Iraq and Egypt.[32] These include 5,000 ancient papyrus fragments and 6,500 ancient clay objects. Kelly Crow interpreted that returning artifacts proves that Steve Green is “bowing to what he called justified criticism from scholars and authorities over the ways he amassed a vast collection for the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.”[33] In 2021, MOTB voluntarily consigned a tablet containing part of “The Epoch of Gilgamesh” to the US government, who then repatriated the tablet to Iraq.[34]
Between legal pressures and their lackluster reputation, the Greens’ reasoning for redeeming their poor collection practices is not necessarily related to ethics. In an interview regarding the return of manuscripts to Greece, MOTB’s chief curatorial officer Jeff Kloha noted that, “MOTB is seeking accreditation” from the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), and “is following standards set forth by [AAM] and the Association of Art Museum Directors.” [35] The Greens may be taking steps to return artifacts, but it may be more so to save MOTB. Nevertheless, the result is partially decolonial, returning objects to their indigenous caretakers.
However, the contemporary antiquities trade continues to mirror historical CMP. Although it is now the Greens and Hobby Lobby who play colonizer, the Middle East, especially Iraq and Egypt, continues to suffer in the inequitable distribution of wealth and power that defines antiquities trades. Neocolonial corporations like Hobby Lobby may refer to their trade as “globalization,” but, in reality, their processes of accumulation are repackaged relationships of exploitation.
Despite the continuing problems with the global antiquities trade, some groups are attempting to address cultural colonialism and its CMP radically. In summer 2020, the Islamic World Organization for Education, Science, and Culture held a virtual conference titled “Combating Illicit Trade in Cultural Property and Recovering Cultural Property,” about changing national and international legislation agreements regarding the recovery of stolen artifacts. Many ministers of culture from countries like Iraq and Egypt participated.[36] The discussion included the growing e-markets and auctions on social media that require updated legislation. By putting laws into place, the artifact rich, often capital poor regions, can reclaim some of the agency that capital rich people or nations take away. By seeking institutional change, the systems and hierarchies that form CMP within the antiquities trade can regain equity.
Endnotes
[1] Candida Moss and Joel Baden, “Exclusive: Feds Investigate Hobby Lobby Boss for Illicit Artifacts,” The Daily Beast, last modified on October 26, 2015, https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-feds-investigate-hobby-lobby-boss-for-illicit-artifacts.
[2] “United States Files Civil Action to Forfeit Thousands of Ancient Iraqi Artifacts Imported by Hobby Lobby,” Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney’s Office, last modified on July 5, 2017, https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/united-states-files-civil-action-forfeit-thousands-ancient-iraqi-artifacts-imported.
[3] Patty Gerstenblith, “The Legal Framework for the Prosecution of Crimes Involving Archaeological Objects,” The United States Attorney’s Bulletin 64, no. 2 (2016): 11.
[4] Sayyidī Aḥmad walad Aḥmad Sālim [Sidi Ahmed Ould Ahmed Salem], “Hāditha sariqa al-matḥaf al-ʿIrāqī [Incident of Theft at the Iraqi Museum],” Al Jazeera, last modified on January 31, 2008, https://www.aljazeera.net/2008/01/31/%D8%AD%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%AB%D8%A9-%D8%B3%D8%B1%D9%82%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AA%D8%AD%D9%81-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%82%D9%8A.
[5] Sālim, “Hāditha sariqa al-matḥaf al-ʿIrāqī [Incident of Theft at the Iraqi Museum].”
[6] Alan Feuer, “Hobby Lobby Agrees to Forfeit 5,500 Artifacts Smuggled Out of Iraq,” The New York Times, last modified on July 5, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/nyregion/hobby-lobby-artifacts-smuggle-iraq.html; Emma Green, “Hobby Lobby Purchased Thousands of Ancient Artifacts Smuggled Out of Iraq,” The Atlantic, last modified on July 5, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/hobby-lobby-smuggled-thousands-of-ancient-artifacts-out-of-iraq/532743/; Kate Shellnutt, “Hobby Lobby Returns ‘Priceless’ Artifacts Smuggled from Iraq,” Christianity Today, last modified on July 6, 2017, https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2017/july/hobby-lobby-steve-green-artifacts-smuggled-from-iraq.html.
[7] Feuer, “Hobby Lobby Agrees to Forfeit 5, 500 Artifacts Smuggled Out of Iraq.”
[8] Sabar, “A Biblical Mystery at Oxford.”
[9] Candida Moss and Joel Baden, “Did Hobby Lobby Buy a Piece of the Bible Illegally Sold on eBay?” The Daily Beast, last modified on October 22, 2017, https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-an-ancient-text-in-the-museum-of-the-bible-real-or-fake.
[10] Mazza, “The Green Papyri and the Museum of the Bible,” 187-189.
[11] “2863 Law on the Conservation of Cultural and Natural Property,” published on July 23, 1983, http://www.lawsturkey.com/law/2863-law-on-the-conservation-of-cultural-and-natural-property.
[12] Moss and Baden, “Can Hobby Lobby Buy the Bible?”
[13] Mazza, “The Green Papyri and the Museum of the Bible,” 187.
[14] David Trobisch, Jennifer Atwood, Johnathan Kirpatrick, and Rory P. Crowley, Verbum Domini II: God’s Word Goes out to the Nations, (Museum of the Bible, 2014).
[15] Mazza, “The Green Papyri and the Museum of the Bible,” 188.
[16] Moss and Baden, “Can Hobby Lobby Buy the Bible?”
[17] Tom Bartlett, “The Provenance Problem,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, last modified on November 14, 2017, https://www.chronicle.com/article/DC-s-Newest-Museum-Has-a/241763.
[18] Bartlett, “The Provenance Problem.”
[19] Sabar, “A Biblical Mystery at Oxford.”
[20] “Oxyrhynchus” refers to the ancient Greco-Egyptian city and an important archaeological site in upper Egypt. The large group of manuscripts that make up the collection were found in an ancient garbage dump near the city.
[21] Sabar, “A Biblical Mystery at Oxford.”
[22] Sabar, “A Biblical Mystery at Oxford.”
[23] Sabar, “A Biblical Mystery at Oxford.”
[24] Carroll was caught planting papyri (again) in Egyptian paper mâché mummy masks. These masks can be dissolved to reveal the scraps of papyri underneath, but this practice was discontinued in the 1960s, because the scraps did not provide new or consequential information that would outweigh the ethical issues of dissolving the mask. The planted fragments were newly discovered Sappho poems, but there are photographs of the fragments dated months earlier. The discovery was announced years later by Obbink who claimed to have found them by dismounting a mask he purchased. When asked, Eksioglu said that he was the source of the Sappho fragments, and the mask story was a rouse.
[25] “Professor Obbink and Missing EES Papyri,” Egypt Exploration Society, last modified on October 14, 2019, https://www.ees.ac.uk/News/professor-obbink-and-missing-ees-papyri.
[26] Dan Gleiter, “Oxford Professor Allegedly Sold Ancient, Stolen Bible Artifacts to Hobby Lobby,” Washington Post, republished on Alabama News, last modified on October 15, 2019, https://www.al.com/news/2019/10/oxford-professor-allegedly-sold-ancient-stolen-bible-artifacts-to-hobby-lobby.html.
[27] Gleiter, “Oxford Professor Allegedly Sold Ancient, Stolen Bible Artifacts to Hobby Lobby.”
[28] The video has, as of the publishing of this article, since been removed from YouTube.
[29] Sabar, “A Biblical Mystery at Oxford.”
[30] Sabar, “A Biblical Mystery at Oxford.”
[31] Sabar, “A Biblical Mystery at Oxford.”
[32] Kelly Crow, “Hobby Lobby President to Return 11,500 Antiquities to Iraq and Egypt,” Wall Street Journal, last modified on March 27, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/hobby-lobby-president-to-return-11-500-antiquities-to-iraq-and-egypt-11585324494.
[33] Crow, “Hobby Lobby President to Return 11,500 Antiquities to Iraq and Egypt.”
[34] Brigit Katz, “Smuggled Gilgamesh Dream Tablet Returns to Iraq,” Smithsonian Magazine, last modified on September 23, 2021, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hobby-lobby-forfeits-rare-gilgamesh-tablet-smuggled-iraq-180978314/.
[35] Mark Kellner, “Museum of the Bible Returns Medieval Manuscript after Discovering Items Theft,” Religion News Service, last modified on August 13, 2018, https://religionnews.com/2018/08/13/museum-of-the-bible-returns-medieval-manuscript-after-discovering-items-theft/.
[36] “ICESCO Calls for Development of Conventions on Illicit Trafficking in Cultural Property,” ICESCO-En, last modified on July 28, 2020, https://www.icesco.org/en/2020/07/28/icesco-calls-for-development-of-conventions-on-illicit-trafficking-in-cultural-property/.
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