Saturday, June 17, 2006

MOSHE DAYAN, the Israeli general, is accused of decades of archaeological looting in an A.P. article:
Dayan is accused in antiquities plunder
AMY TEIBEL
Associated Press

JERUSALEM - Stunning military victories made Israeli general Moshe Dayan an iconic figure on the international stage, but his reputation for looting antiquities is little known outside the country where his myth was born.

Across three decades until his death in 1981, Dayan, of the trademark eye patch, established a vast collection of antiquities acquired through illicit excavations. He also traded in archaeological finds in Israel and abroad, antiquities experts say.

"Moshe Dayan didn't deal in archaeology. He dealt in antiquities plundering," said Uzi Dahari, deputy director of the Israel Antiquities Authority. "He was a criminal. He knew he was breaking the law. He knew that all his activity was against the law, and he did it nevertheless."

[...]
The piece refers to an article in the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures which you can read here or download as a PDF file here. This is the abstract:
Journal of Hebrew Scriptures - Volume 4: Article 5 (2003)

Raz Kletter, A Very General Archaeologist - Moshe Dayan and Israeli Archaeology

Abstract


This article is a preliminary investigation of three decades of robbery, collection and trade in antiquities by General Moshe Dayan, perhaps Israel’s most famous commander and politician. In trying to separate facts from the many rumors that follow his name, this contribution is mainly based on written sources, some never published before. They prove that, since 1951, Dayan was involved in large-scale robbery of antiquities in dozens of sites in Israel and the occupied territories. Dayan used army equipment and personnel for robbery and transfer of antiquities; established a vast collection of stolen and bought antiquities, and exchanged and sold antiquities in Israel and abroad. He became a negative model for others and damaged the cause of Israeli archaeology as a whole. Although Dayan was caught in person at least four times during robbery, he was never brought to justice. After his death, his collection was sold by his widow to the Israel Museum for 1 million US$. Though Dayan’s activities are a sort of a known secret in Israel, they were never investigated from an archaeological perspective. Many facts remain unknown since they appear in remote Hebrew sources, hence writers about Dayan, including some of his biographers, often follow the wrong, romantic view of him as the ‘good guy’- a sort of an Israeli Robin Hood that fights stupid bureaucracy and social rules. This article brings a representative sample of Dayan’s deeds and tries to evaluate them and to ask how they were possible, and what has changed since those “good old days”.

No comments:

Post a Comment