The Sesostris III statue affair

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The “Sestostris III” statue from the collection of François Pinault: the itinerary of a fake

By Luc Watrin (01/2006)

The royal statues of the Middle Empire, whose golden age took place during the reigns of King SESOSTRIS III and his son AMENEMHAT III (around 1900-1800 B.C.) feature masterpieces of naturalist sculpture about which leading specialist for the period Dietrich Wildung provides a glimpse through his essays (i.e. Wildung, 1984, Le Moyen-Empire). Complex and hard to copy, the statue types from this period nonetheless are widely copied by counterfeiters. The attempt to beguile using fake objects is fraud. The term “fake” seems the most appropriate to designate this type of fraud where the counterfeiter invents and “forges” his productions “from scratch”. Yet it is important to distinguish between copies of objects that are produced for tourists, and those claiming to be ancient, which are intended to trick experts, sometimes sold for great amounts to wealth collectors or public museums.

The history of fake Egyptian artifacts shows that unscrupulous art dealers collaborate with a few less-than-honest institutional Egyptologists, legitimizing these forgeries through their words and their writing. What better guarantee could reassure a buyer than to show them “a guarantee certificate” signed by an Egyptologist working for a major public museum or a state university?

This being the case, we believe that objects on the art market must be systematically scientifically tested. Professional confrontation with objects from official excavations, stylistic analysis and studies of the materials can generally detect fakes.

Yet two recent examples, the statue of the King SESOSTRIS III currently in the collection of François Pinault and the statue of King ZAMENEMHAT IV in the collection of Theodore Halkedis, which cost nearly a million dollars to their respective owners, continue to be considered as antiquities of great value. Their very existence represents an affront to Egyptology knowledge and confuses young researchers or enthusiasts whom often take the written word as scripture.

Fundraising and Egyptian statues: The statue of King SESOSTRIS III, purchased at Drouot in 1998 and the contradictory expert counsel

Dietrich  Wildung  that this statue is suspect, mister Pinault refused to honor its purchase, sparking the beginning of what would be come the “Sesostris III scandal”.

Expert testimony by Mesdames Christian Desroches-Noblecourt and Elisabeth Delange in March 2000 concluded that the sculpture of the seated pharaoh called SESOSTRIS III which is now the property of Madame Pinault “shows Egyptian know-how and great quality of the statue overall, with no structural errors […] clearly proving it to have been crafted in antiquity”. Since this statue shows some differences with other known effigies, experts have advanced the theory of a “post-mortem statue of the king” made “60 years after the death of Sesostris III at the end of the XIIth and at the beginning of the XIIIth dynasty”.  

The statue, according to our counter-testimony performed in February 2002, is a fake. A laboratory analysis later confirmed this counter-testimony (July 2002).

Simply put, this statue contains nothing of a royal effigy from the XIIth dynasty. This statue is 56.5cm high and represents a seated king, with the forearms resting on the thighs, the left hand flat and the right hand closed and holding a [linge]. It is made of a speckled granite from Aswan. Yet reviewing the royal statues of the XIIth dynasty demonstrates that this stone was never used for royal portraits by Middle Empire sculptures whom preferred more refined stone.

The name of the king is inscribed on the [belt]. Photographs taken in Berlin in 1981 show that this statue originally bore texts on its base. The inscription is a reproduction of the king’s name and title. These texts are forgeries, clumsy and crude with some of the signs written backwards (the first two signs of the king’s personal name). After being rejected by the Berlin Museum, which concluded that the texts were not authentic, they were erased, as can be seen in a photo taken in Geneva in 1983. During t he sale of this statue, the expert art dealer (M. Chakib Slitine) indicated that they might have been a “modern addition to an antique statue”, basing that argument on Jean Yoyotte’s reference to such cases.

The attribution to SESOSTRIS III is based only on the cartridge etched onto the belt. Yet the cartridge is faulty (the signs of the raised arms that are supposed to make up the king’s crowning name have a round base and not a rectangular one). A careful study of the hieroglyphs on the belt of the statue show that they are identical to the ones that originally appeared on the base. Contrary to what some have said, the erased texts were etched at the statue’s making and not added later to enrich it. Since all of the texts are faulty, there is nothing left to link it to the reign of SESOSTRIS III. Mmes Desroches-Noblecourt and Delange regret that the texts were erased because they are convinced that they were authentic.

Studying the main stylistic characteristics of the statue leads us to conclude that the statue is a fake:

-The statue represents a king sitting on a cubic throne with a low back. The thrones of the Middle Empire were high and narrow, whereas this one is low and wide, as if inspired by the thrones of the Ancient Empire. In the Middle Empire the throne was represented as not exceeding the maximum width of the body and arms.

- A second major fault lies in the shape of the dorsal pillar. It is high and straight from the base to the summit (rectangular apex). Yet in the XIIth dynasty, the dorsal pillars of the kings are low and wide at the base, and tapering at the top (trapezoidal apex). This criterion makes it possible to conclude that the statue does not date from the period of SESOSTRIS III, and that the counterfeiter drew inspiration from later sculptures from the XIIth dynasty.

-A third anomaly is that the head is proportionally too big compared to the rest of the body as Professor D. Wildung pointed out. There exist a few cases, in Egyptian royal representations, of disproportionately-sized heads, the best example of which is the head of King Mykerinos, now conserved in the Boston museum, clearly too small in respect to the shoulders and the rest of the body. It is a unique case of its kind (Boston 09.204). However the context of its finding and its restoration (head found separately in the debris of the Mykerinos temple and placed atop one of the monumental statues of the king) makes the graft unlikely and explains the anomaly. In the case of Sesostris III, the features of the pharaoh look nothing like those of SESOSTRIS III that can be recognized easily when looking at authentic statues of the king. The expression on the face is heavy and common whereas portraits of SESOSTRIS III have features that are hard and haughty but always noble. The eyes are strangely expressionless. The ears are almost proportional, do not stick out enough and are too high.

- A forth incoherence is the shape of the [attaches] of the [names]. They are rectangular on the right and round on the left. The statue has a straight [attaché] (which is standard during the Middle Empire) and a round [attaché] which is current in later periods such as Taharqa (XXVth dynasty). It would be unimaginable that an artist from the XII dynasty make such a stylistic error! Lastly the face is incredibly modern, recalling perhaps a Roman emperor but in no case a king of the Middle Empire.

- A fifth incoherence with the statues from the excavation of the veritable king: the necklace with shell etched out of the stone whereas on all the authentic sculptures of SESOSTRIS III it is in relief.

Is the model of the litigious statue in the US?

Here are two 55-cm effigies of the king Sesostris III represented in sitting position. These two statues, in black granite, are conserved at the Walter Art Museum of Baltimore and in the Brooklyn Museum of New York (we are not familiar with their archaeological context but according to the texts engraved on the base, they would be from the oasis of the West and Hierakonpolis in the south of the Fayyum). They may have inspired the counterfeiters, as they are about the same size, have a similar representation.

The legal saga and the eyebrow-raising position of French institutional Egyptologists

For more than 20 years this statue has been the subject of much writing because it has been paraded from Egypt to Switzerland then onto Germany and to the USA before finding a purchaser in France in 1998. In the United States, it appears that only Madame Edna Russman believed in its authenticity. In Germany, Professor Hans Wolfgang Müller of the Berlin Museum believed it, and added in a written opinion in 1983 that “In the end, what counts is that the statue pleases its purchaser”. In Belgium, Claude Vandersleyen, in early 2002, declared the statue authentic without providing any arguments other than his gut instinct.

But it’s in Champollion’s homeland that the object has the most sympathizers. Mmes Desroches-Noblecourt and Delange (the latter of whom before the sale gave a favorable opinion of the statue, confirming its authenticity) affirm in a pseudo-scientific demonstration that the statue is not only authentic but furthermore is a “masterpiece” since it is a “posthumous” statue (supposedly made 60 years after the reign of SESOSTRIS III) and is thus more rare than the statues habitually sculpted during the king’s lifetime.

The Professor Jean Yoyotte initially recused himself, starting in 1998, as non-competent to provide an opinion, suggesting before the sale of the art dealer Chakib Slitine to contact period specialist Professor Dietrich Wildung, then conservator at the Munich museum. After analyzing the piece in Paris, Wildung immediately gave a negative opinion, though that did not prevent the seller to place the sale up for bid on the 10 November 1998 (sale by Olivier Coutau-Bégarie, the expert hired by M. Chakib Slitine, lot 120). The professor D. Wildung, very surprised that his opinion was not heeded, later published his opinion of the piece in the German press (Bild Berlin Brandenburg, 14/09/1999). His position was ignored or refuted in France. Professor J. Yoyotte indicated to Monsieur Chakib Slitine that “Wildung is just meddling like an old man”.

Mme Desroches-Noblecourt responded to skepticism concerning her expert testimony with defamatory attacks on the persons that do not agree with her scientific opinion, against Monsieur D. Wildung during the first lawsuit and against myself in the second.

Professor Jean Leclant (Lifetime Secretary to the Academy of Sciences and Literature) contacted on the subject by Master Gauzères, leading attorney for the Pinault couple, declared that he couldn’t rule on a statue that is supposed to be from the XIIth dynasty because he is a specialist on the “Ethiopian period” (XXVth dynasty). The attorney of François Pinault, lacking any support in France, pleaded during the first hearing that the statue was authentic. He was not aware of the negative opinion provided by professor Wildung nor that of a famous Swiss art dealer, whose opinions were well-structured and appeared in the file. On orders from his employers, he sided with the French Egyptologists in declaring that the statue was authentic. Maître Gauzères, pleaded an « error of substance », stating that the purchased statue did not correspond to the one described in the catalog (statue contemporary with the king Sesostris III) but to a slightly later piece (a hypothesis retained by the expert-witnesses named by the court, , Mmes Desroches-Noblecourt and Delange). The court rejected that legal strategy and ruled against Monsieur and Madame Pinault in the first court case, alleging that the piece was indeed “authentic” and that that was the important part of the debate.

During a second hearing (appeal), a counter-testimony was asked of me as an expert-witness, just a few months before the closing of the legal process. An stylistic analysis concluding that the statue is a crude fake was drafted (Luc Watrin, 11 February 2002, Rapport d’étude sur le Sésostris III vendu à Drouot le 10 Novembre 1998, 2 volumes, 342 pages). This expertise was supported by written opinion by a score of preeminent foreign Egyptologists that we contacted in late 2001 and early 2002. These specialists are essentially English and American but include Italians, Austrians, Danes, Swedes, Serbs, Uruguayans, Israelis, and Egyptians. Among them figure John Baines (Oxford), Marcel Maree (British Museum), Vivian Davies (British Museum), Jeffrey Spencer (British Museum), Martin Foley (Bangor University, UK), Jack Josephson (Cultural Counselor for the Bush administration), Robert Bianchi (former conservator of the Brooklyn Museum), Donald Redford (University of Pennsylvania), David Lorton (University of Baltimore), Jennifer Hellum (University of Toronto), Claude Obsomer (University of Louvain), Helmut Satzinger (Director of the Vienna Egyptology museum), Silvio Curto (Turin Science Academy), Francesco Raffaele (University of Naples), Kim Ryholt (University of Copenhague), Leif Andreasson (University of Göteborg), Branislav Andelkovic (University of Belgrade), Baruch Brandl (directof of the IES), Juan Castillos (Director of the Uruguay Egyptology school) and Mamduh el-Damaty (Director of the Cairo museum). The services of Zahi Hawass, informed about the matter, responded that “if the statue had been authentic, our director would have issued a claim on it”.

Louvre collections that the statue of Sesostris III was authentic, a thesis based singularly on her academic position rather than on any scientific argumentation. Monsieur Jean Yoyotte (professor at the Collège de France) unsuccessfully tried to pressure my research director (then the IFAPO director at Damas) into immediately halting my investigations on this statue. Madame Desroches-Noblecourt also tried to dissuade any meddling in this affair by penning a defamatory letter to the manager of foreign missions within the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities to block our concession in the Delta, with a certain success. Lots of other French Egyptologists refused to comment. Some of them declared that they were incompetent to judge, or that “all in all, the statue may have been authentic”. Others such as Olivier Perdu, who is also a consultant on the antiquities market, said that they couldn’t comment for reasons of “professional discretion”. Another esteemed Egyptologist admitted that they didn’t want to go against the opinion of the elite of the system due to risks to his stipend.

Only Monsieur Jean-Claude Goyon (professor at Lyon II) attempted a scientific argument by presenting a new hypothesis in which the statue in question would have been earlier than the XIIth dynasty and would actually have dated to the XIth dynasty, and that the king Sesostris III would have made it his own by etching his name and titles. According to Monsieur Goyon, this hypothesis would explain why the statue is not in the “barbarian” style (as defined by D. Wildung) current during the reign of Sesostris III and his son.

The new lawyer of Monsieur François Pinault, Maître Philippe Combeau, on instructions from the new legal order-giver, Monsieur Michel Friocourt, pleaded without much conviction that there were “doubts on the authenticity”. Just as with the argument « error of substance » invoked during the first trial, the subtle « doubts on the authenticity” was an unsuccessful legal strategy. Once again, Monsieur and Madame Pinault were ruled against in the Appeals court of the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris. During the second legal episode, Madame Slitine, the spouse of the art dealer and also conservator at a French national museum, made death threats against me in the courthouse, telling me “not to go to Egypt where I wouldn’t be safe” in front of numerous witnesses, all due to my participation in defending Monsieur Pinault.

Second part: The scientific proof