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ST. LOUIS - The St. Louis Art Museum has refused to meet a Monday deadline for returning a mummy mask to Egypt.
At a Friday press conference, museum director Brent Benjamin called upon Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, to "provide documentation substantiating his claim that the mask was stolen - or to cease his attacks on the St. Louis Art Museum."
In a letter dated Feb. 14, Hawass charged that the 3,200-year-old mask was illegally taken in the early 1990s from a storage facility near the site of its excavation, and he demanded that the process of returning it start within two weeks.
Hawass later changed his deadline for the mask's return to Monday. The museum maintains that it has not received any communication from him setting a date. He did not reply to a Post-Dispatch request for comment.
Benjamin has said the museum exercised due diligence in 1998 at the time of the acquisition to determine whether the mask had been legally exported from Egypt. He said Friday the museum independently verified the mask's known provenance, or history of ownership; that it contacted the Art Loss Register and Interpol to see if the mask had been reported missing, lost or stolen; and it consulted with Mohammed Saleh, then director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, to ensure that the pending purchase was appropriate.
"In all of this research, no authority ever identified this important work of art as missing, lost or stolen," he said.
Hawass has not specified what action he would take if the Monday deadline were not met, but at a May 1 press meeting in Cairo, he told the Post-Dispatch he would disparage the museum in the art world. "I will make their life hell," he said.
In the May ARTnews, the largest circulation U.S. art magazine, he is quoted as saying, "How can this museum bring children to visit and tell them that this (mask) is taken out illegally from an excavation?"
Benjamin said Friday the museum considers Hawass' allegations to be very serious, "but it seems that drama has gotten in the way of the facts."
He reiterated that "the Saint Louis Art Museum would reconsider its rightful ownership of the mask if valid documentation surfaces refuting our proper ownership."
Hawass has a reputation as colorful and entertaining. ARTnews said admirers find him charming and enthusiastic; detractors see him as autocratic, egotistical, vindictive and publicity-hungry.
ARTnews noted that Hawass proclaimed, "I am Pharaoh!" upon entering a gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where the exhibition "Hatshepsut" was on view.
No one, however, slights his knowledge or passion for his culture's ancient art. In the May 8 issue of Time magazine, he was listed among "100 People Who Shape Our World."
In a telephone interview Thursday, Renee Dreyfus, curator of ancient art at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, and co-curator of the "Hatshepsut" exhibition, which borrowed major works from the Egyptian Museum, said: "Hawass is bringing Egyptian art to the attention of the world. He does that partly by speaking out boldly. You can't dismiss him."
Hawass is expected to visit Chicago in the next two weeks when the "King Tut" exhibition opens there. Should he take a side-trip to St. Louis, Benjamin said, "Dr. Hawass is always welcome at the St. Louis Art Museum."
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(c) 2006, St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
