Artifacts up for auction to pay debtFortunately the really valuable items are not (yet) on the auction block:
Ancient religious relics seized from collector from Akron in 2005
By David Giffels
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Saturday, Mar 15, 2008
What was once a bright constellation in the universe of art and antiquities is disintegrating in an online auction, mouse-click by mouse-click, in a major step toward satisfying millions of dollars of an Akron collector's debt.
The continuing fall of Bruce Ferrini from international prominence is being documented in real time, as eBay-style bids creep upward on 153 items, many of them ancient religious artifacts.
A 2,800-year-old strip of linen mummy wrap, inscribed with text from the Book of the Dead.
Current bid (as of Friday afternoon): $1.
A Babylonian pottery vessel, ap
proximately 3,800 years old, valued at $3,000 to $5,000.
Current bid: $150.
Ferrini owes some $5 million to a long international list of creditors. Mainly because of the eclectic nature of the collection and the controversy attached to its architect, this auction has been more than two years in the making.
Some not includedI certainly hope that the Dead Sea Scrolls fragments, pitiful though they are, end up in a museum in Israel.
The auction does not include the three most valuable and controversial segments of Ferrini's disputed collection. An ongoing legal battle has yet to sort out the true owner of these items, worth millions:
• A batch of biblical artifacts that include fragments from the Book of Exodus and the Letter of Paul to the Colossians. It also includes part of the controversial Gnostic manuscript known as the Gospel of Judas.
• A large marble Assyrian relief believed to have belonged to Alexander the Great.
• Fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, whose display at the John S. Knight Center in 2004 devolved into a contentious public squabble, with court injunctions and lawsuits over missing money, unpaid bills and claims of fraud.
Charlie Bowers is a Cleveland attorney who represents Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos of Switzerland, who claims to be sole owner of the papyrus pages of the Gospel of Judas. He hopes the auction represents a step forward in resolving Ferrini's complex legacy.
''We certainly hope that the receiver gains as much from the auction as possible,'' Bowers said. ''But what does still remain to be determined is the ownership of the other items that we still claim.''
Bowers declined to put a value on the Gospel of Judas fragments, and said doing so would be irrelevant, as his client has promised to donate the artifact to Egypt, where it can be properly archived, displayed and studied.
Besides the above link, note the following PaleoJudaica posts involving Bruce Ferrini (in chronological order) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. The last four of these deal with the fragments from the same codex as the Gospel of Judas (the Tchacos Codex). On those, note this post as well.