The Acquisition and Exhibition of Classical Antiquities: Professional, Legal, and Ethical Perspectives

The Corinth Theft

  The Corinth Theft Nancy Bookidis D     , ,  Thursday in the Greek Orthodox Easter Calendar, thieves broke into the Corinth Archaeological Museum in Greece and carried off more than 270 objects. When the American School of Classical Studies in Athens built the museum in 1932, the likelihood of theft was relatively slight, and the safety measures taken then were thought to be sufficient: heavy bronze doors, thick walls of solid concrete, and windows divided into slats that were too narrow for passage. At the same time, the building’s design reflected a spirit of openness, for the galleries and workrooms were designed around two large courts, open to the sky—one for the public, one for the staff. This proved to be our undoing. After beating and tying up the night guard, the thieves tried to force the bronze doors, but a 1932 Yale lock could not be broken. They then climbed over the outer roof into the main courtyard.1 From there they easily broke through the glass doors and entered the galleries. Beginning with the Greek gallery, they systematically 119 1. They had, apparently, “cased” the museum as tourists and had bought ladders in nearby New Corinth just in case they couldn’t force the door. pried open the cases and emptied them, leaving behind whatever they thought would not “sell,” more Corinthian than Attic pottery, as it turned out. They then proceeded to the Roman gallery. Fortunately , time ran out before they could empty this one as well. Fortunately , too, they could not take large objects because they had to lift everything over the roof. This process of transportation led to some damage, in particular to the hair and nose of a marble head of Dionysos.2 Once the police arrived, the museum was blocked off, and we could only look in through the windows. What we could see was devastating: endless empty cases with their doors hanging open. One fine Attic black-figure cup3 had accidentally been left on a stone funeral couch in the center of the room, for the thieves had, of course, functioned in the dark. Still, I cannot begin to describe how we felt as we looked through those windows, and afterwards when we could enter the museum—the violence of the act, the looting of what had become old friends and treasured monuments of Corinthian history. In a Greek documentary on antiquity theft, The Network, I used the word“rape.”In fact, Corinth had been raped. They had taken 15 fragments of marble statues, chiefly Roman heads but also one early fifth-century BCE head; 5 large-scale terracotta heads of the sixth, early fifth, and fourth centuries BCE— the best of our collection; 159 vases; 51 figurines; 11 glass vessels; 28 pieces of jewelry and small utensils; and one bronze statuette.4 I would like to describe what work that theft generated. This is not often considered in the aftermath of a theft. We were in the middle of our annual training excavations for the students of the 120 Nancy Bookidis 2. S-1669: International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR), IFAR Reports 1990, no. 685; F.-J. de Waele 1961, p. 190 for photograph. On the whole, damage to the objects was slight. 3. CP-552. J. D. Beazley 1956, p. 52.13; H. A. G. Brijder 1983, pp. 162, 248, no. 128, pls. 27b–c, 29b. 4. For a complete listing, see IFAR Reports 11.6, June 1990. The black- figure vases are shown in A. Brownlee 1995, pp. 337–82, pls. 91–96. American School.We sent the students to Athens for a longer Easter break. Charles Williams II, the director, and I then began a case by case inventory of what was missing. As we completed each case, we passed the inventory numbers over to Robin Rhodes, who was working in Corinth. He pulled the inventory cards, which contained descriptions, dimensions, publication references, and small contact photographs, and handed them over to the two local representatives of the Greek Archaeological Service, who had to translate over 270 descriptions from English to Greek. We all started around 10:00 a.m. and had completed the inventory and translations by 7:00 p.m. of that same day. These were immediately given to the police. Photographs were required; hundreds of negatives were sent up to our Athenian contract photographers, Ino Ioannidou and Lenio Bartziotou. Declaring a...