Kim Kardashian and the Repatriation of a Looted Egyptian Coffin

By Serena Mundy

Copyright: Landon Nordeman

A photograph of Kim Kardashian posing next to an Egyptian coffin at the 2018 Met Gala has unveiled the inner workings of an international antiquities smuggling ring. The photograph, depicting the celebrity socialite’s golden Versace gown glimmering next to a complementary coffin, quickly took the internet by storm. The coffin was the centrepiece of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in July 2018, entitled ‘Nedjemankh and his Gilded Coffin’. This exhibition displayed over seventy other works, but this ‘never seen before’ coffin was the event’s main attraction. 

This caught the attention of Matthew Bogdanos, Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan and leader of the District Attorney’s antiquities trafficking unit. Bogdanos had been tracking the illegal ring for five years, unable to prosecute them without any concrete evidence. Then, he was sent the photograph via email by one of the looters who had unearthed the coffin in the al-Minya region of Egypt. The source detailed that he was disgruntled that he was still pending payment for his role in the coffin’s sale. Bogdanos subsequently requested photographic evidence of the coffin the thief referred to, successfully pairing it with that of the Met’s exhibition. The photograph of Kardashian sent to Bogdanos enabled him to identify the coffin as stolen, providing him with proof of antiquities smuggling taking place in New York.

The coffin is said to be that of an Egyptian high priest, Nedjemankh of the ram-god Heryshef of Herakleopolis, and dates back to the first century BC. Depicted on its golden surface are scenes and texts designed to guide Nedjemankh spiritually from death to eternal life. An inscription on the coffin reads ‘o gold, o gold, o flesh of the god, o flesh of the god, o fine gold, o fine gold,’ alluding to the ancient Egyptian association of precious metals with divinity. 

With this new information, Bogdanos successfully traced the coffin’s provenance and journey to the Met. During the Egyptian revolution of 2011, thieves excavated the coffin and discarded the mummy inside into the Nile. During this hurried process, a remaining finger bone was overlooked. Two years later, the thieves sent the coffin to an antiquities dealer, Hassan Fazeli, in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates. From there it travelled to Germany under forged export papers. Fazeli labelled it as Greco-Roman to avoid suspicion, hiding it in plain sight and transporting it via FedEx. It then arrived at its new German owner, Roben Dib, manager of the Dionysos Gallery in Hamburg. Dib had the coffin, previously in poor condition, repaired to the state that it is now in. However, he forged documents –  an Egyptian export licence stating that it was Nedjemankh’s coffin, exported legally in 1971 – enabling him to sell it on without fear of interception. Dib then successfully sold it on to Paris-based French antiquities scholar, Christophe Kunicki, and his associate antiquities dealer, Richard Semper. Semper subsequently sold it to the Met in 2018 for $4 million.

From here, the coffin was identified in the Met – following Kim’s photograph – by the finger bone that had been accidentally left behind by the looters. This resulted in Roben Dib’s arrest in Hamburg and the coffin’s repatriation to Cairo in 2019. Dib was released on bail after five weeks and still claims innocence. The discovery of a stolen antiquity in such a prominent position in the Met raised questions about the thoroughness of the museum’s research into their acquisitions. This resulted in the director Max Hollein’s vow to ‘review [their] acquisitions programme to understand what more can be done to prevent such events in the future.’ Furthermore, Hollein has vowed to ‘consider all available remedies to recoup the purchase price of the coffin.’ CEO Daniel Weiss issued a formal apology to the people of Egypt, in particular their antiquities minister, Khaled El-Enany. With the difficulties surrounding the provenance of artefacts, museums around the world must invest more resources into discovering how their objects came to be in their hands today. Much more than one might expect of the collections in such museums came to be there due to colonialism and pillaging, such as the Benin Bronzes. For an artefact from such a respected museum as the Met to be identified as stolen opens up a realm of questions that need to be asked about the objects we appreciate in museums and galleries. As viewers benefitting from these objects, we have a moral obligation to respect the cultures they represent.

The socio-political importance of antiquities is highlighted by this process of repatriation. International events such as the Arab Spring have raised governmental priorities to prevent illegal art smuggling. The Arab Spring destabilised the region, leaving nations unable to protect their cultural heritages and allowing great increases in looting. It is particularly common to see an increase of antiquities on the market areas experiencing conflict. In addition to the removal of cultural heritage, the money from these artefacts funds militant groups such as Isis.

Matthew Bogdanos – when serving as a Colonel in the army – protected the Iraq Museum, which had contained some of the greatest Mesopotamian artefacts in the world. The museum, though, had been heavily looted during the extended period of conflict. Bogdanos meticulously catalogued some fifteen-thousand missing artefacts. He succeeded in recovering and repatriating thousands of stolen artefacts by forensic analysis. Following the war, he established the Antiquities Tracking Unit in the District Attorney’s office of New York in 2012. Bogdanos seeks to change the perception of looting antiquities and selling them from their home country to another from a victimless crime to a crime that steals nations’ heritage. Furthermore, Max Hollein asks us to view these lootings as an ‘offense against cultural property.’ These artefacts are the stories of the civilisations we now inhabit.

The investigation into this international criminal network, suspected of smuggling half a dozen masterpieces to the Met and Louvre Abu Dhabi and earning more than fifty million Euros, is ongoing. 

Bibliography

Cherner, Jessica. “Kim Kardashian’s Viral Met Gala Photo Helped Solve the Mystery of a Stolen Egyptian Coffin.” Architectural Digest. 19/10/2021 https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/kardashian-met-gala-egyptian-coffin

Ibrahim, Samantha. “Kim Kardashian’s Met Gala photo helped solve looted gold Egyptian coffin case.” New York Post. 18/10/2021. https://nypost.com/2021/10/18/kim-kardashians-met-gala-pic-helped-solve-looted-egyptian-coffin-case/

Lewis, Ben. “Art Bust: Scandalous Stories of the Art World. ‘The Golden Coffin.’” Podcast. 21/07/2021

Noce, Vincent. “New York authorities return ancient stele to Egypt.” The Art Newspaper. 23/11/2020

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2020/11/23/new-york-authorities-return-ancient-stele-to-egypt

Stapley-Brown, Victoria., Kenney, Nancy. “Met hands over an Egyptian coffin that it says was looted.” The Art Newspaper. 15/02/2019 https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2019/02/15/met-hands-over-an-egyptian-coffin-that-it-says-was-looted