Between 2020 and 2021, the US government seized 13 ancient Egyptian artifacts at JFK airport, including a 5,200-year-old vase, according to a legal documents filed earlier this month.
A declaration submitted by Homeland Security Investigations agent Aaron Klein stated the 14 items were seized under the federal crime of smuggling goods into the US.
Those items include a faience amulet of the goddess Hatmehyt from Egypt’s Late Period (664B BCE–332 BCE); a Egyptian wooden canopic jar cover from the New Kingdom Period, dating to the 19th Dynasty or later (1300 BCE); a Cypriot vessel, two painted limestone Shabtis, and a painted limestone bed figurine from ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom period (1549 BCE–1075 BCE); two phallic figurines from 664–30 BCE; a pre-Dynastic vase from 3500 BCE–3200 BCE; and a limestone lug-handled jar from 3000 BCE–2600 BCE.
An ancient limestone funerary statue with an estimated value of $6 million was also seized in Anchorage, Alaska.
Klein’s 22-page declaration named six individuals and companies, including three shipping companies in Bangkok, Thailand, and Hong Kong; two eBay users based in the US; and a Canadian individual who operates an art gallery. An unnamed historian of Egyptian art, an associate curator at a US museum, and a curator at a British museum were also consulted for identification of two of the items.
Klein’s declaration was filed to the US District Court for the District of Maryland on September 23, 2024.
Antiquities collector Mark Ragan confirmed that he purchased eight of the 14 items intercepted by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and named in Klein’s declaration. “I was snookered, because I did my homework before I bought the pieces,” Ragan told ARTnews. “I asked. You can’t ask directly, because eBay doesn’t want you to know who the person is, or how to contact them, or else lose their pound of flesh.”
Ragan said he purchased the ancient Faience amulet of the goddess Hatmehyt “from a old British collector that came out of a county fair auction or something like that.”
While the amulet was shipped from the UK, Ragan purchased seven other items from an eBay seller with the user ID CENTURYART, who claimed to be based in San Antonio, Texas.
“I was just taking a shot in the dark,” Ragan said of his purchases, which he estimated cost $2,000 in total. “Because if they were original, it was going for really cheap.”
Ragan told ARTnews that he had gone back and forth with CENTURYART, identified in Klein’s declaration as Sylvia Ivette Barrera, asking for where the items came from. There was no indication Barrera knew how old the items were, and Ragan was told that the items came from the seller’s father. “I don’t think she knew what she had,” Ragan said. “That’s why I thought there’s no way these she’s working for any smugglers or anything. And it turns out they were coming from Thailand.”
Between September 17, 2020, and September 22, 2020, a wooden canopic jar, a Cypriot spindle ware vessel, three shabtis, four figurines, and the pre-dynastic vase were shipped from Century Arts in Thailand to the Ragan’s home in Edgewater, Maryland, by the German logistics company DHL. After these items arrived in the US, CBP inspected them and then transferred them to New York for additional analysis.
“The U.S. Curator physically examined the items contained in the shipments and determined that they were genuine Egyptian antiquities,” Klein wrote. “None of the shipments contained any paperwork identifying the items as antiquities or describing the provenance or origins of the antiquities.”
Klein’s statement also noted that the unnamed US curator was able to compare a painted wood Ushabti box to one in the collection of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. The vessel sent to Ragan, meanwhile, was compared to a vessel in the collection at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
As a result of CBP’s inspection, Ragan was asked about paperwork, which he couldn’t supply. Eight items were subsequently seized by the US government.
Ragan said the experience changed the way he purchased antiquities online. “I don’t mess with anything overseas, because I know that that is probably going to be opened up, and if they don’t have the proper paperwork, that’s it, they’re going to take it,” Ragan said. “It definitely put a damper on my Egyptian collecting.”
Homeland Security Investigations and eBay did not respond to a request for comment from ARTnews.
News of the seizure was first reported by Court Watch.