# Good or bad thing to buy Babylonian cuneiform tablets on Ebay? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 19, 2002, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-or-bad-thing-to-buy-babylonian-cuneiform-tablets-on-ebay/109833 "2002-05-19T17:52:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2002, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-or-bad-thing-to-buy-babylonian-cuneiform-tablets-on-ebay/109833/21 "2002-05-20T05:57:21Z")
MEBuckner wrote: > [@](#): > > How do you define antiquities? Are Buffalo nickels antiquities? Buffalo nickels? Pah. My local coin dealer has a jar full of those things that he sells for 20 cents a pop, sight unseen. And nearly half of them have the dates worn off. (The dates on buffalo nickels were particularly badly designed. The numbers were the highest point on the coin, guaranteeing that they’d get rubbed off first, and they were in low relief, gruaranteeing that they’d get rubbed off quickly. But I digress.) If you’re gonna collect nickels, get’cherself some Shield nickels. Same basic design as the bronze 2-cent piece, only harder to find. Or get some of those 3-cent nickels that pre-dated the shield nickels. And round out your collection with one of each year/mintmark of the wartime-alloy-silver Jefferson nickels. But not buffalo nickels. _Yawn_ ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2002, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-or-bad-thing-to-buy-babylonian-cuneiform-tablets-on-ebay/109833/22 "2002-05-20T05:59:30Z")
What about Elizabethan chamber pots? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2002, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-or-bad-thing-to-buy-babylonian-cuneiform-tablets-on-ebay/109833/23 "2002-05-20T11:38:14Z")
Hmmmm; some of these items are (allegedly) being sold from the estates of private collectors (that’s not to say that they still weren’t plundered carelessly, but we might be talking about Victorian archaeology, rather than modern-day treasure hunting, if there’s a difference). One of the eBay auctions made me chuckle though; look what the seller is saying: > [@](#): > > …no guarantee is made that any of my descriptions, dating, culture or condition are accurate. Therefore, asking me additional questions as to the culture, condition, dating, etc., will probably not prove to be helpful…All items are sold as-is and all sales are final. Absolutely no refunds or exchanges… Would you buy a used car from this man? (let alone a supposedly genuine antiquity). To be fair, he has no negative feedback, but reading his lengthy disclaimer, my brain cells are all screaming “prepare to be ripped off”. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2002, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-or-bad-thing-to-buy-babylonian-cuneiform-tablets-on-ebay/109833/24 "2002-05-20T15:42:09Z")
Yes, there is a lot of cuneiform writing out there. Individual ownership of an Old-Babylonian stores distribution record is probably not going to change the historiography of Mesopotamian culture, especially if you are willing to let researchers and curators have access to your artifact and, as **Guin** suggests, eventually donate it or will it to a museum or library. **HOWEVER.** The real argument against private purchase of antiquities is that it **encourages looting** of archaeological sites by people who know they can get a good price for illicitly obtained artifacts from antiquities dealers. It may not make much of a difference in the long run whether a few cuneiform tablets end up in a private collection, but it makes a **huge** difference **how** they get there—that is, whether their provenance and context have been properly studied by archaeologists before they come on the market. The field of Assyriology is still struggling with the burden of thousands of looted tablets from the nineteenth century, all contextual information about which has been (probably permanently) lost. Knowing what site a particular text comes from and where in the site it was stored, what was stored with it, etc., is usually at least as important historically as knowing what the text says. Encouraging this kind of contextual destruction by buying unprovenanced, illicitly acquired artifacts is just making it all the harder for archaeologists and historians to figure out the Straight Dope on ancient civilizations. For a worm’s-eye view of the sort of problems this causes, take a look at the on-line newsletter [Culture Without Context: the Newsletter of the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre.](http://www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/IARC/cwoc/issue6/news.htm) (A cite from the 2000 issue: “February: Three men were executed for stealing 15 Tang Dynasty murals from a museum in Liquan, Shaanxi province, between 1992 and 1994.” :eek: This is far too harsh IMHO, but it does tell you how seriously this sort of thing is taken in many cases.) ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2002, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-or-bad-thing-to-buy-babylonian-cuneiform-tablets-on-ebay/109833/25 "2002-05-20T22:51:19Z")
**This** is what I worry about. [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=116158](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=116158) Check out the links there, too. One freak with a grudge trashes the unique. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2002, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-or-bad-thing-to-buy-babylonian-cuneiform-tablets-on-ebay/109833/26 "2002-05-20T23:26:44Z")
Actually, you have to be VERY careful how you handle any artifact-no matter what it is. Also, you’d be surprised what archeaologists and historians are interested in. When I was down at the Heinz Center, I was helping to enter information on a collection we got from the old Pat Bus station-they found six deep wells and cisterns on the property. Full of old glass and things you would think were junk-old pieces and shards of glass. Ink bottles, tumblers, chamber pots, old sauce bottles, things like that. And all of them were valuable. You cannot even touch these things without wearing gloves and taking extra precautions. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2002, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-or-bad-thing-to-buy-babylonian-cuneiform-tablets-on-ebay/109833/27 "2002-05-21T04:56:58Z")
Old sauce bottles at the Heinz Center? Imagine that. ---
**Author:** ![Tedster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4491bb/32.png) [@Tedster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tedster)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2002, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-or-bad-thing-to-buy-babylonian-cuneiform-tablets-on-ebay/109833/28 "2002-05-21T06:31:54Z")
It’s my understanding that universities have to compete with private collectors for meteorites as of late, in which they are none too happy since in the past, the prices were relatively nominal. eBay sells a fair amount of those, too. The temptation would be great, however – certain varieties are ‘worth’ a pretty healthy chunk of change by most peoples standards, so a cottage industry has sprang up. Illegal antiquities trading is extremely problematic, since the demand is high and the stuff is currently laying in the ground. I could have sworn eBay prohibited antiquities from auction but obviously not. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2002, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-or-bad-thing-to-buy-babylonian-cuneiform-tablets-on-ebay/109833/29 "2002-05-21T11:05:36Z")
Well, one thing that I’ve learned from this thread (actually I already knew it, but it’s a nice way to have it hammered home) is that [spreadsheets](http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=871370867#DESC) are nothing new. ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2002, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-or-bad-thing-to-buy-babylonian-cuneiform-tablets-on-ebay/109833/30 "2002-05-21T15:24:52Z")
To play a bit of devli’s advocate: What’s so special about “antiques” or “artifacts”? Just because some academic wants to study it, is it automatically off limits to the common man? Just because you’re an archaeologist you get to dictate what private property (an archaeological site on my land, for example), of _mine_ I can or cannot have access to? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2002, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-or-bad-thing-to-buy-babylonian-cuneiform-tablets-on-ebay/109833/31 "2002-05-21T15:34:29Z")
I was going to ask that **Eonwe** , but I chickened out. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2002, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-or-bad-thing-to-buy-babylonian-cuneiform-tablets-on-ebay/109833/32 "2002-05-21T18:47:25Z")
**Eonwe:** _Just because some academic wants to study it, is it automatically off limits to the common man?_ Of course not; in fact, letting researchers study such artifacts is generally the best way of making them available to “the common man”, since they tend to end up in publicly accessible museum or university collections and to be translated and explained in published articles and books, instead of being squirreled away for the sole delectation of some wealthy private collector. _Just because you’re an archaeologist you get to dictate what private property (an archaeological site on my land, for example), of mine I can or cannot have access to?_ Archaeologists don’t “dictate” such decisions by virtue of being archaeologists: governments place legal restrictions on access to sites if they (and by extension, in the case of democratic governments, their citizens) care enough about preserving the archaeological heritage of their country to require such sites to be professionally excavated instead of just being looted by pot-hunters. In any case, AFAIK, such archaeological preservation laws in the US apply only to public lands and Native American lands held in trust by the government. If you dig up a prehistoric pot on your private property, you’re at liberty to do anything you like with it. I recommend doing “the common man” a favor and letting a professional archaeologist study it for publication. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2002, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-or-bad-thing-to-buy-babylonian-cuneiform-tablets-on-ebay/109833/33 "2002-05-21T19:27:47Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by JThunder \* > \*\*Old sauce bottles at the Heinz Center? Imagine that. \*\* Hehe. No, actually they were from another area-and the Heinz Center itself is a museum-named after Senator Heinz who was killed in a helicopter crash back in what-1995? (Yes, he was affiliated with THE HEINZ, though!) LOL Seriously-that’s how you learn about history-studying the trash people leave behind. And yes, it is just an old clay tablet-however, any historian or achaeologist will tell you that you have to be very careful handling artifacts-at the Heinz, I was never allowed to touch anything without gloves and in the proper setting (mostly old clothes and toys). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-or-bad-thing-to-buy-babylonian-cuneiform-tablets-on-ebay/109833.md?page=1)