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Showing posts with label Oxford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oxford. Show all posts

March 26, 2024

Judgment entered in favor of Plaintiff (Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc). against Defendant (Dirk D. Obbink)


In early June 2021 Hobby Lobby Inc, owned by craft store mogul, David Green,  filed a Civil Complaint for fraud against former professor Dirk Obbink.  According to Civil Docket No. 21-CV-3113, the craft conglomerate alleged that as many as 32 items that it had purchased between 2010 and 2013 from the Oxford professor, to be featured in the Museum of the Bible (MOTB), were not his to sell.  

Instead, the papyrus fragments the scholar sold them via Private Sale agreements had been stolen from Egyptian Exploration Society's collection.  The textual artefacts  were identified as having come from the Grenfell and Hunt excavations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at the site of Oxyrhynchus and were removed from the EES collection while Obbink still had access to the Sackler Library of the University of Oxford.

During the period of Obbink's commercial relationship with the MOTB philanthropists he served as the General Editor of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri for the EES (until August 2016).  He was also a renowned Lecturer in Papyrology and Greek Literature in the Faculty of Classics at Oxford.  That position ended in a fall from grace in February 2021 just as his life as a part time dealer began to unravel.  

The seven Hobby Lobby-purchase transactions were itemised as:

    Purchase #1 - February 6, 2010: Papyri fragments for $80,000 
    Purchase #2 - February 15, 2011: Papyri fragments and other antiquities for                $500,000
    Purchase #3 - July 22, 2010: Papyri fragments and other antiquities for $350,000 
    Purchase #4 - November 20, 2010: Papyri fragments and other antiquities for            $2,400,000
    Purchase #5 - July 20, 2011: Papyri fragments and other antiquities for                       $1,345,500 
    Purchase #6 - March 7, 2012: Papyri fragments and other antiquities for $609,600
    Purchase #7 - February 5, 2013: Papyri fragments and other antiquities for                 $1,810,000

Obbink had represented to Hobby Lobby that the 32 items he was selling all came from private collectors. 

In September 2023 Hobby Lobby asked the Magistrate Judge, overseeing the case at the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York to grant their request to transfer their fraud and breach of contract case to the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, where the company is headquartered. On October 5, 2023, their request was granted and on October 17th an amended complaint against Obbink was filed with the court in Oklahoma City which was served on the scholar on 4 November 2023. 

Throughout the proceedings, Obbink has failed to appear, plead, or otherwise respond to the unfolding US-based court case, and on January 29, 2024 Hobby Lobby filed a motion seeking a Clerk's Entry of Default.  As a result, on March 11, 2024 Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, David L. Russell entered a motion for Default Judgment in favour of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., awarding them the eye popping sum of $7,085,100.00, with prejudgment interest from February 5, 2013, at the rate of 6% per annum. 

Yet despite this scandal of Biblical proportions, Dirk Obbink was last seen on his houseboat, self-destructively ignoring the US and UK legal drama swirling around him. 

To recap the last eight years. 

In the Spring 2016 the Egyptian Exploration Society realised that the much rumoured "First Century Mark" papyrus that had been the subject of so much speculation was in fact their own papyrus fragment (P.Oxy. 5345).

By August 2016 the EES decided to not re-appoint Obbink as the General Editor of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri primarily because of unsatisfactory discharge of his editorial duties, but also because of concerns, which he did not allay, about his "alleged involvement" in the marketing of ancient texts, especially the controversial Sappho and Gospel of Mark fragments.  

By December 2017, according to court documents, Obbink had admitted to Hobby Lobby that he had “mistakenly” sold the Gospel Fragments in Purchase #7 (for  $1,810,000) and that they were, in fact, owned by his employer, the Egyptian Exploration Society.

By January 2018 the Museum of the Bible formally severed ties with the Oxford-based scholar. 


On 16 April 2019 Obbink's UK-based antiquities sale's enterprise, Castle Folio Limited was dissolved.

By June 2019 the Egyptian Exploration Society took a harder stance against their former colleague and banned Obbink from any access to its collection pending his satisfactory clarification of the 2013 contract. 

On 2 March 2020 Obbink was "detained" briefly by officers from Thames Valley police on suspicion of theft and fraud. Unnamed at the time by the British authorities, he was released after questioning. 

By February 2021 Obbink no longer held his position as Lecturer in Papyrology and Greek Literature in the Faculty of Classics at Oxford University and had retreated to his houseboat where he was served in relation to the US court case. 

Yet, to date, and despite the ongoing investigation by the Thames Valley Police, Dirk Obbink has inexplicably still not been charged with any crime in the United Kingdom.


By:  Lynda Albertson

April 25, 2020

Saturday, April 25, 2020 - ,,,,, No comments

Christ Church loans and other Dirk Obbink answered and unanswered questions.


In an article in today's UK Times, the London newspaper reported that a review of Christ Church college's annual reports indicate that there was an equity-sharing arrangement with Dr. Dirk Obbink for £434,000 in 2018 in order for the professor to purchase a property. 

Agreements of this type are not unusual per se and are even written into the Statutes of Christ Church Oxford:

5. Equity sharing arrangements for Official Students, Officers and other persons employed by the House 

(a) Subject to such provisions (if any) as may from time to time be contained in the By-laws but without prejudice to the powers of investment contained in clause 2 of this Statute the Governing Body may enter into equity sharing arrangements with an OfficialStudent, Officer mentioned in Statute XVI.  1 or other person employed by the House who does not reside in the House.
 

(b) Subject as aforesaid, the Governing Body may dispose of any interest in a property acquired under an equity sharing arrangement to any co-beneficiary of the trust of land on such terms as it thinks fit.
 

(c) For the purposes of sub-clauses (a) and (b) of this clause, an equity sharing arrangement is an arrangement to purchase property jointly with an Official Student, Officer or other person employed by the House and with family members of such persons is a constituent college of the University of Oxford.

Awkward timing and unfinished business

While The Times didn't give an exact date of the execution of this financial arrangement with Obbink, we know that by 4 June 2018, in a statement issued by the Egyptian Exploration Society that they had questioned Dr. Obbink about the sale of P.Oxy. 5345, the so-called First Century Mark fragment.  The EES has repeatedly affirmed that this papyrus fragment has never been for sale and was allegedly sold without their consent or knowledge along with other fragments determined to be missing from the collection held at Oxford University’s Sackler Library, all of which made their way into the collections at the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC.

According to the EES statement, when questioned Obbink acknowledged having shown P.Oxy. 5345 to Scott Carroll, at the time affiliated with the MotB and the Green Collection's point person for purchases, as well as to Oxford students in his college rooms but had "insisted that he had never said the papyrus was for sale, and that while he did receive some payments from the Green Collection for advice on other matters, he did not accept any payment for or towards purchase of this text."

How this equity arrangement with Christ Church will be effected by Obbink's legal troubles, if at all remain to be seen.   

One also has to wonder what the impact will be, if any, of Obbink's legal entanglements on the publicly funded research grant he obtained through the UK's Research and Innovation (UKRI) on Living Virtually: Creating and Interfacing Digital Surrogates of Textual Data Embedded (Hidden) in Cultural Heritage Artefacts.  Funded from May 2019 through April 2022 for £845,579 Dr. Obbink is listed as the project's Principal Investigator.

One thing the Times article did clear up is that it was Professor Obbink's legal team, and not Christ Church College, who contacted The Oxford Blue newspaper and threatened legal action for them having named the professor in reporting his arrest on 2 March 2020.  That contact has resulted in the student newspaper amending their original article, which is now back online.

April 18, 2020

Saturday, April 18, 2020 - ,,,,, 1 comment

Censorship by the Oxford University or by Dirk Obbink's law team?

On 16 April Lois Helsop at The Oxford Blue broke the news of that Thames Valley police had arrested American papyrologist Dr. Dirk Obbink, an associate professor in papyrology and Greek literature at Oxford University, on 2 March 2020.  ARCA, as well as prominent news outlets, picked up on this news notice, and in our case, linked back to Helsop's original article and directed our readers also to earlier ARCA postings (see this running thread) of this professor and the buying and selling of ancient texts.   

Professor Obbink has been the focus of much journalistic attention regarding the unauthorised sale of papyrus from the Oxyrhynchus collection, which is owned by the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) and housed at Oxford's Sackler Library, pieces of which were discovered to have been purchased by the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC. 

Today that Oxford Blue article has been removed.  Replaced by a brief statement which reads:
"This article is currently not available while The Oxford Blue takes counsel on legal threats it has received. The factual accuracy of this article is not contested by any party."
One has to ask, whose lawyer's rattled the young newspaper's cage?  Was it Oxford University's or Dr. Obbink's? While official guidance over whether arrested suspects’ names should be published ahead of charge is mixed, it is poor form to intimidate journalists for reporting facts on a high profile case, knowing a student newspaper doesn't have the funds to fight a litigious battle.  Luckily, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, a service that preserves web pages, has a copy of the original story archived, at least for now, or until they too receive a lawyerly take down request. 

Archived news articles are indispensable research resources as they can help reconstruct events, even the distasteful ones, which are necessary for historical and comparative research.  Often they are the last trace we have before knowledge is locked away in private nondisclosure settlements, or worse, when reporting is removed to avoid threats, legal and otherwise.

Here's to a universal access to all knowledge and if you have not already PDFed this webpage to memorialise the material for your own research, then now might be a good time, especially if you are following the interrelated cases of ethical behaviour in the museum and academic worlds as closely as we are.

April 16, 2020

Dirk Obbink arrested on suspicion of ancient papyrus theft


It has now been made public, by the Oxford Blue that American papyrologist Dr. Dirk Obbink, an associate professor in papyrology and Greek literature at Oxford University, was taken into custody on 2 March 2020 by the Thames Valley police on suspicion of theft and fraud.  His arrest last month came in direct response to a formal complaint filed on 12 November 2019 involving the theft of papyrus fragments from the Oxyrhynchus collection, owned by the Egypt Exploration Society (EES), and housed at Oxford's Sackler Library.  

To date some 120 pieces have been identified as having been removed without permission from Oxford University premises.  Thirteen of these fragments eventually found their way to the United States where they were purchased by the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC.  


Genesis 5:  P.Oxy. inv. 39 5B.119/C(4-7)b.  [PAP.000121] 
Genesis 17:  P.Oxy. inv. 20 3B.30/F(5-7)b.   [PAP.000463] 
Exodus 20-21:  P.Oxy. inv. 102/171(e).   [PAP.000446] 
Exodus 30.18-19:  P.Oxy. inv. 105/149(a).   [PAP.000388] 
Deuteronomy:  P.Oxy. inv. 93/Dec. 23/M.1.   [PAP.000427] 
Psalms 9.23-26:   P.Oxy. inv. 8 1B.188/D(1-3)a.   [PAP.000122] 
Sayings of Jesus:  P.Oxy. inv. 16 2B.48/C(a).   [PAP.000377] 
Romans 3:  <related to P.Oxy. inv. 101/72(a)>.   [PAP.000467] 
Romans 9-10:  P.Oxy. inv. 29 4B.46/G(4-6)a.   [PAP.000425 one part] 
1 Corinthians 7-10:  P.Oxy. inv. 106/116(d) + 106/116(c).   [PAP.000120 three small fragments] 
Quotation of Hebrews:  P.Oxy. inv. 105/188(c).   [PAP.000378] 
Scriptural homily:  P.Oxy. inv. 3 1B.78/B(1-3)a.   [PAP.000395] 
(parchment) Acts of Paul:  P.Oxy. inv. 8 1B.192/G(2)b.   [MS.000514]

Obbink was appointed to the University Lectureship in Papyrology at Oxford in 1994, taking over the post vacated by Peter Parsons when the latter took up the Regius Chair of Greek.  His appointment at Oxford combined a variety of responsibilities, includes a Tutorship at Christ Church, where he lectured on a wide range of classical material and at one point included the direction of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project and its related Imaging Papyri Project which gave him complete access to the society's collection. 


Suspended from duties at Oxford in October 2019 pending further inquiry, Obbink has only issued one public statement, for his part, denying any wrongdoing.  In that public statement, Obbink stated: 


March 16, 2020

Museum Theft: Three Baroque paintings stolen from Christ Church, University of Oxford

Image Credit:  Thames Valley Police
Three Baroque Period paintings have been stolen from the Christ Church Picture Gallery, an art museum at Christ Church, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England.  According to law enforcement reports the theft took place at around 11pm on Saturday, 14 March 2020. 

The three paintings are:

Oil on Canvas, circa 1616
H 91 x W 55 cm
Accession number: JBS 246

Oil on Canvas, circa 1640 
H 75.2 x W 61 cm
Accession number: JBS 222

Oil on Canvas, circa 1580
H 75.5 x W 64 cm
Accession number: JBS 180

All three paintings had been bequeathed to Christ Church: two of them centuries ago.

The museum is known for its impressive collection of Old Masters paintings and drawings, with an emphasis on Italian art from the 14th to the 18th century. Works in the museum also include paintings and drawings by Titian, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Dürer, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens and Tintoretto, many of which were donated by General John Guise (1682/1683–1765) in the eighteenth century and whose portrait is also to be seen in one of the museum's rooms. Guise is known to have donated some 200 artworks to the college in furtherance of its art education programming. 

Headed by Detective Chief Inspector Jon Capps, the Thames Valley Police are  appealing for witnesses who may have seen or heard anything suspicious in the immediate area or elsewhere on on St. Aldates or High Street.  They are also asking for assistance from area businesses who may have CCTV footage which could aid in their investigation.   Officers can be contacted by calling the non-emergency number 101, or making a report online using the reference 43200087031.  Individuals who wish to remain anonymous can contact the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

August 17, 2013

Llewelyn Morgan's "The Buddhas of Bamiyan" reviewed by Catherine Sezgin (The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2013)

Llewelyn Morgan, University Lecturer in Classical Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, "had an interest in Afghanistan from a couple of sources," before he spent 14 months writing The Buddhas of Bamiyan. Morgan explained in an email:
Like a lot of Classicists, I was fascinated by the legacy of Alexander the Great and the Greek culture that persisted in Central Asia for centuries after him. Years ago, I was staying at my grandmother's house (after her death), and was sifting through the antiques and knick-knacks she obsessively collected. I found a samovar, and discovered that it was from Kandahar in 1881, during the Second Afghan War. Later I made friends with someone who was in charge of clearing mines in Afghanistan and he persuaded me to celebrate my 40th birthday by visiting the country.
The Taliban's destruction of the giant stone Buddhas in Afghanistan captured international attention. Morgan concisely explains which group provided the Taliban with the ammunition to destroy the two colossal images of the cliff Buddhas (Al-Qa'ida) and why (to create international outrage six months before the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in 2001). Morgan assesses the loss of the archaeological monument ("Bamiyan was Afghanistan's Stonehenge, the most celebrated archaeological site in the country"):
It remains a terrible tragedy that they were destroyed. What I hadn't realized before doing the research is what an immensely rich history that they had and what very significant monuments they had been for a variety of cultures. ... they were a wonder for three separate cultures, the Buddhists that created them, the Islamic peoples who followed, and then, in the 19th and 20th centuries, for the Western world. The 19th century, when British and European travelers and spies rediscovered the statues, is a particularly fascinating period of history. The best way to compensate for an artistic crime is to fill in the proper meaning of these monuments.
You may finish reading this book review by Catherine Sezgin in the ninth issue of The Journal of Art Crime, edited by ARCA Founder Noah Charney (available electronically and in print via subscription and Amazon.com). Associate Editor Marc Balcells (ARCA '11) is a Graduate Teaching Fellow at the Department of Political Science, John Jay College of Criminal Justice -- The City University of New York.

August 6, 2012

Classics Scholar Llewelyn Morgan and the “Buddhas of Bamiyan”: For more than 1,200 years a Buddhist icon reigned over an Islamic Trading Post

by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

One of our ARCA subscribers alerted me to a book published this year by Profile Books (UK) and Harvard which tells of the long history of the gigantic Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban’s anti-artillery weapons in Afghanistan in 2001. My only knowledge of these objects is the furor created on international news of the videotape that showed the destruction of these cliff icons. YouTube has a video, “Afghanistan Taliban Muslims destroying Bamiyan Buddha Statues”, which supposedly interweaves the religious justification for this act of iconoclasm. But the destruction of the statues is not the point of Llewelyn Morgan’s book, which focuses on ‘their remarkably long lives’ (See "The Buddhas of Bamiyan by Llewelyn Morgan - review" by Samantha Subramanian in The Guardian, May 18, 2012).

Via Skype and email, Llewelyn Morgan, a lecturer in Classics at Oxford University, discussed his book, which tells of the survival of these symbols of Buddhism alongside one of the major trading routes of Afghanistan, a limb of the famous “Silk Road”, for more than 12 centuries. His book is based on
the recorded impressions of travelers such as Xuanzang, journeying through Bamiyan en route elsewhere…. Writings of surveyors, soldiers and antiquarians of the Raj … texts by Muslim travelers allow Morgan to parse the surprising malleability, over the ages, of Muslim attitudes towards this Buddhist iconography. [The Guardian, Subramanian]
Buddhism arrived in the Bamiyan valley in the 1st or 2nd century AD.

A German visitor in the 1950s photographed
 another tourist's car at the foot of the Buddha.
Photo Courtesy of Edmund Mlzl.
ARCA blog: How long did it take you to write this book? And what drew you to this subject?
Dr. Morgan: It took me from starting research to submitting final proofs about 14 months. I had an interest in Afghanistan from a couple of sources. Like a lot of Classicists I was fascinated by the legacy of Alexander the Great and the Greek culture that persisted in Central Asia for centuries after him. Years ago, I was staying at my grandmother’s house (after her death), and was sifting through the antiques and knick-knacks she obsessively collected. I found a samovar and discovered that it was from Kandahar in 1881 during the Second Afghan War. Later I made friends with someone who was in charge of clearing mines in Afghanistan and he persuaded me to celebrate my 40th birthday by visiting the country.
ARCA Blog: What are your personal feelings after studying the history of these statues?
Dr. Morgan: It remains a terrible tragedy that they were destroyed. What I hadn’t realized before doing the research is what an immensely rich history that they had and what very significant monuments they had been for a variety of cultures. They were a wonder for three separate cultures, the Buddhists that created them, the Islamic peoples who followed, and then, in the 19th and 20th centuries, for the Western world. The 19th Century, when British and European travelers and spies rediscovered the statues, is a particularly fascinating period of history. The best way to compensate for an artistic crime is to fill in the proper meaning of these monuments.
ARCA Blog: Is this like the story of a murder victim?
Dr. Morgan: Indeed. Parallel to a murder victim. Rather like the Buddhas, most victims are anonymous until they are murdered. These Buddhas were very celebrated in the western world in the 1830s/1840s because so many people were writing about them. But their celebrity waxed and waned. In 2001 nobody had heard about them, their name recognition was restricted. Yet when I started talking about these statues, many people in their 50s and 60s who had visited as hippie travelers in Afghanistan brought me their photographs. The Buddhas of Bamiyan are now famous because they have been destroyed, and because of the circumstances in which they were destroyed, because their destruction was followed by the more serious events of 9/11. 
Key to the story of the Buddhas is that there were on this major route between Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, not the only route through the mountains of the Hindu Kush, but one favoured for its comparative easiness. Traders, missionaries and armies moved through there. For the British in 19th century, and in this they followed armies going back centuries, Bamiyan was a critical strategic military location, occupied by them in 1839/40 (a bulwark against the threat they believed was posed by the Russians). 
The strategic location of Bamiyan and its position on the trade routes, all help to explain what made it a thriving Buddhist centre in the first place. Buddhism is a religion with very strong commercial instincts. Buddhist monasteries were banks and commercial operations as well as straightforwardly religious institutions. The gigantic Buddhas advertised the piety of this place to visitors, but also blazoned its wealth and power. The Buddhists of Bamiyan would have seen no contradiction in that, I don’t think. Buddhists and Muslims coexisted for a period at Bamiyan, we believe. But by 900 AD, there are no longer any Buddhists around. For 1100 years it has been a strictly Islamic community that surrounds it. But the statues had become an integral part of those Muslims’ home environment. The Muslims of Bamiyan are predominately Shiite, and the statues were incorporated into the Shiite mythology of the area, for example believed to be images of the last pagan king of Bamiyan and his wife, converted to Islam by Hazrat-I Ali, a kind of Islamic St George.