Mark Fox wrote the Moneta list this: "Late last year, Turkey and Tunisia formally requested the US to impose import restrictions on a very wide range of archaeological and ethnological material. I only became aware of the proposed MoUs a few days ago. Coins are only implied in the Turkish request, but will almost assuredly be raised and burdened with import restrictions in the upcoming Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) meeting on January 21. For the regulars among us not attending the meeting, we have only until January 7 to submit electronic or printed public comments to influence the outcomes. Interested parties (from around the world) can do so by entering the docket DOS-2019-0043 at https://www.regulations.gov/ and clicking on the “Comment Now!” button. More info on the current MoUs and instructions on what points should be addressed in electronic comments can be found at: http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2019/11/please-comment-on-proposed-mous-with.html " I went to https://www.regulations.gov/ searched on DOS-2019-0043 found the comments page and wrote a comment opposing the inclusion of ancient coins. I encourage you to do it too. Many ancient coins come from Turkey. If Turkey and the US government agree to restrict import of some of them, officials might decide is is simply easier to restrict all of them. Who will be enforcing this? Surely not knowledgeable customs officers who will only intercept truly significant coins. Restrictions on imports from Tunisia will include coins of Carthage. Do you really think Tunisia needs more coins of Carthage and US collectors should not have them? If it gets harder and harder to buy ancient coins from abroad because MOU's are approved, will you be able to, at least, say you tried to help limit the MOU's so they did not include ancient coins?
I made a comment. As of now, there are only 11 listed. I hope that more people in this community take the chance to add a comment, even if it is a very short one. While it is disheartening to know that our voices will probably be ignored, if we do not speak out we have little room to complain. Even when we feel we are not being listened to, we are obligated to raise our voices or risk losing our right to have them. Complacency is the root of much corruption.
I have commented as well. Take a moment to fill this out. Not all of the comments were agaisnt so please spend a moment to defend our hobby.
I think it takes a while to get posted. I wrote a comment yesterday or the day before and it still isn’t there.
I wonder why. I submitted a comment before starting this thread yesterday and it still does not show up.
Someone probably checks to make sure there is no profanity, etc., before it is posted publicly. I’m fairly sure I didn’t swear, but I wanted to
There is little to zero religious, cultural, or ethnic continuity between the ancient Carthaginians and Greeks or later Romans and the modern Tunisians and Turks. Why exactly do they feel that such alien cultural residues are theirs to restrict and control? That's not to say modern Lebanese, Greeks, or Italians would be much better about the issue but it still makes me wonder. Is it all just about money? Archaeological lobbying groups trying to secure the future of their professions? Ancient animus that this American fails to understand, or an attempt to control the historical narrative to support current sociopolitical realities?
One of my mentor's spent a lot of time in the 1980s working in Middle Eastern countries doing numismatic research. According to him, most coin collections are neglected, and officials are actively hostile to efforts to catalogue them, and would purposefully scramble their collections after they were catalogued. It is indeed a matter of job security, since they have the opportunity to receive funding for doing that task, and then drag it out for as long as possible. Even when catalogued, they are rarely published; good luck finding any information about archaeological holdings for most Turkish or Tunisian institutions. That's not me saying the archaeological community is bad (we should encourage mutual respect and support; there are bad people in all fields), but that's the reality he saw. That's to say nothing about the distastefulness of saying the Turkish state is the rightful 'protector' of Armenian cultural property, which this would entail...
Hah, yes indeed that's a good observation. My Greek Cypriot friend would have similar qualms with the Turkish oversight of cultural resources in occupied northern Cyprus, an issue which is quite personal for those I consider to be the rightful residents and heirs of the island's rich history. The anecdote detailing your mentor's observations and experience certainly demonstrates that there is a practical albeit underhanded collective personal financial interest at stake for some classes of professionals, but there must be other, presumably far-sighted transgenerational agendas working in concert toward the same immediate goal. Two people can sleep in the same bed but dream different dreams, as they say. As Orwell observed; "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." Given the clear Turkish (and general Globalist/Post-Nationalist) predilection toward rewriting, obscuring and skewing history, I wonder if this inconvenience to us collectors isn't part of a more sinister long-term scheme to deracinate peoples by severing them from their unique history, values and identity in favor of a centrally curated false national or global identity in order to create a more pliable and ignorant, interchangeable populace. It takes longer, but in this century even the Turks are likely to find ethnocide superior to genocide. I dunno if that strikes a chord with anyone or merely reeks of tinfoil but machinations like this get the ole noggin joggin' in that direction. Apologies for going off on a tangent, so here's a big 28 gram Justinian follis I'm waiting to get under my coin-cleaning microscope:
Hmm. Both Tunisia and Turkey. Considering that an item comes from what is today Tunisia but centuries ago was part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire who gets it?
