PART I
Certain Infamy
in Egyptology and
Museology
PART II
"The
Truth Is On The March"
PART III
Unfinished
Draft
of a Letter
PART IV
Psalms
Men in High Places
Quotations & Statements
Letter to
Egyptologists
PART V
"Common Sense to Ponder..."
PART VI
"Je Cherche Un Homme"
Sequel to "Je Cherche Un Homme"
A
MUST READ New Letter
A
SECOND Must Read Letter!
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LETTER TO EGYPTOLOGISTS
Let it be
known that, so far, Prof.
Wildung hasn't spoken the truth about the Collection. He said
nothing true to substantiate
his claim that the Mansoor Amarna sculptures "are not
antique." Please consider
the following:
A) He
stated that "the gifts of
the Mansoor Family to the Vatican Museum and to the Louvre were
done by the Bank of
America as advertisement during the offer for sale ... This is
far from the truth as it
never happened, and there was no donation to any of the two
museums until after the sale
ended. Was this a deliberate lie?
B) He
claimed that the Mansoors had
offered a donation to the Berlin Museum and that it was
refused. This is preposterous and
definitely not true. I honestly think that this man, Prof.
Wildung, may be deliberately
lying when he stated that "the former Director of the
Ägyptisches Museum Berlin had
good reasons to refuse such a donation." Another
deliberate lie?
C) He, Prof.
Wildung, confided to an
Egyptologist that the Mansoors brought a lawsuit against him,
and were he to come to the
USA, he would be arrested. He never contested it when I asked
him in my last letter about
that lawsuit. Is this one more deliberate
lie?
Perhaps a
good soul should remind
Prof. Wildung that "Falsus in uno, falsus in
omnibus."
If you've
read "The
Truth...," you'd know that we had offered a donation of an
Amarna sculpture to the
British Museum, and that it was declined. And Prof. Wildung knows
about it since I wrote
to him on page 110 of the "The Truth..." the following:
"Concerning the
donation to the British Museum, 'the trustees were bothered by
the publicity that
surrounded the Collection and had been "frightened off"
by the adverse opinions
and the controversy in general.' This, Dr. Wildung, is the reason
why they declined the
donation."
But I'd
like to be a good sport and
give Prof. Wildung some ammunitions he may like to use in case he
still wants to impose
his nefarious opinion on all, or to write a monograph and include
in it the Collection
which he has neither examined nor even seen one object of
it.
In our
lifetime, the Mansoors,
father and sons, have offered donations of Amarna sculptures only
to the following
institutions (and to none other):
I. To the
Denver Art Museum, a small
head of a Princess after they purchased in the mid-fifties a
Head of Nefertiti. That
museum still owns the two pieces, and refused to sell them back
to us at three times the
price they paid for the Nefertiti Head. Please see "The
Truth...," p. 104.
II. In
1979, to the Vatican Museum,
a Head of Nefertiti and a Relief of Akhenaten. The donation was
made after our 1978
agreement with Bank of America had ended. This is clearly shown
in "In
Defence..." p. 34, and it vitiates Prof. Wildung's
allegation that this gift was
"done by the Bank of America as advertisement during the
offer for sale ... which was
in 1978. I challenge Prof. Wildung to prove, or to simply show
us somewhere that the
Louvre and/or the Vatican Museum had received any donation from
the Mansoors prior to
1978.
It should
be noted that in 1998,
after Prof. Grenier asked the "authorities of the Vatican
Museum not to exhibit"
the two Amarnas, as per Exhibit #33, and after the Museum took
them down from display, the
Mansoors requested and took back the two
pieces.
III. In
1981, the Louvre accepted a
Statuette of an Amarna Princess as a donation from the Mansoors
to honor Etienne Drioton,
a giant in Egyptology. I understand that the Statuette is not
on display at this time, but
is on rotation.
IV. In
the early eighties, three
more museums declined a donation of an Amarna sculpture from
the Mansoors. They are: The
British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art.
I have given the reason the British Museum gave. As for the two
American museums, I
strongly believe that they declined the donation out of
solidarity, and in deference to a
VIP powerful family member, the Boston Museum of Fine
Arts.
V. In
1986, the Mansoors donated a
Statuette of an Amarna Princess to San Francisco State
University to honor the work of
Prof. Andreina Becker-Colonna, and it is now on display in the
Becker-Colonna Gallery of
San Francisco State University.
On February
2, 1998, Prof.
Jean-Claude Grenier, Egyptologist at the Université Montpellier
III, France wrote a
"convincing" but definitely fallacious statement
inviting the authorities of the
Museo Gregoriano Egizio not to exhibit the two Amarnas donated by
the Mansoors. In reading
that statement, Exhibit #33 & #33A, the reader
will have no problem
noticing that, not only is he prejudiced and totally unqualified
to give an opinion on an
Amarna artifact, but that he is justifying his negative
"conviction" by relying
on the opinion of many unnamed Egyptologists and on that of Dr.
B. Bothmer.
Perhaps
Grenier is, at this time,
Consultant to the Vatican Museums, but according to his 1998
statement, he held the
position of Curator of the Museo Gregoriano Egizio from 1985 to
1989. Having in mind that
Monsignor Nolli published his unequivocal positive opinion in his "In
Defence..." in 1986, one wonders why Grenier waited so long,
i.e. until 1998, to come
out with his superbombastic statement when Nolli is no more with
us in this world?
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