But that doesn't mean there aren't lots of colorful stories floating around. One story, which several of those involved had heard, involves a Russian-Jewish billionaire who supposedly had expressed interest in purchasing the manuscripts but had pulled out after his attorneys advised that he may run into legal difficulties. No one would divulge his name.I note that the number of texts is back down to 150. The number "200 or more" was suggested at one point. The current article raises the possibility of a Karaite connection for the manuscripts. And this is the first I've heard that "a few are probably older" than a thousand years. I wonder what that means.
It “adds an element of mystique,” [antiquities dealer Lenny] Wolfe said. “I personally never spoke to any Russian oligarch. What I’ve heard is hearsay. I don’t trust hearsay.”
Menashe Goldelman, a London-based expert in Middle Eastern antiquities who has authored a 23-page report on the documents, told JTA that they emerged on the London market several months ago. Goldelman said he had been enlisted by a dealer to sell the documents on his behalf. At present, Goldelman said he was trying to broker an agreement with the various dealers to bring the collection together. Goldelman estimates their total value at about $5 million.
“They are not things that are stolen from an institution or found in a legal excavation,” Goldelman said. “At some point, everything that comes from the ground goes to the black market. The black market, this is the institution that helps to save this material. If something has, let’s say, commercial value, it gets saved. If you don’t have a commercial value for the manuscript, they go and put it in the fireplace.”
Goldelman's involvement may not reassure skittish buyers about their provenance. In 2010, two professors reportedly accused him of trafficking in stolen antiquities and protested his scheduled appearance at a conference in Israel. Goldelman's lawyer denied the accusations and threatened to sue for libel.
None of the experts who have spoken publicly on the matter of the Afghan documents appeared to be too troubled by unanswered questions about their origins, seeming to accept such things as the cost of doing business in ancient artifacts.
“What is important for us is that these fragments and documents don’t get buried again in some safe of a collector,” said Haggai Ben-Shammai, a professor of Arabic at Hebrew University and the academic director of Israel's National Library. Ben-Shammai said the library was searching for a donor who would acquire the manuscripts on its behalf.
“We don’t have the means to acquire them on our own,” Ben-Shammai said. “We need some assistance in this.”
This case illustrates the difficult choices scholars have to make in dealing with unprovenanced antiquities. On the one hand, we don't want to encourage looting. But on the other, it would be culpable negligence to ignore discoveries like this because they were not excavated in situ. I don't have a good solution.
Meanwhile, if you know of any philanthropists with a few million to spare, you might want to show them this article.
Background here and links.