A bankrupt baron

Did the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden allow itself to be misled by the forger? In short, the answer to that is: not entirely, because the museum bought the object as part of a bigger collection of dozens of authentic ancient Egyptian artefacts. The collector, Friedrich W. Von Bissing, who personally purchased the piece, did probably get fooled at the time.

Von Bissing (1873-1956), came from a noble German family. He’d studied Egyptology in Berlin, and spent several years in Egypt. There, he financed diggings in Abu Ghurob and carried out Egyptological research. He also started acquiring antiques in Egypt. During this period, Egyptology and archaelogy were Western male-dominated fields. The market for archaeological finds in Egypt flourished in the 19th and first half of the 20th century. Through this trade, the wealthy Von Bissing was able to curate a large collection of ancient Egyptian objects. It’s possible he bought the forged relief from a trader in Cairo.

After Germany lost World War I in 1918, the country was forced to pay sanctions, leading to an economic crisis. Von Bissing worked as a professor of ancient Egyptian art at the University of Munich from 1906-1922, and as a professor of ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern art history at the University of Utrecht from 1922-1926. The crisis hit him as well, and he was forced to resign from his position at Utrecht after a scandal. Because of his financial issues, he then saw himself forced to auction off and sell his Egyptian objects, in multiple instalments. In 1939, the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden bought one of these parts of his collection, including the fake relief.Willem van Haarlem, ‘Lotgevallen van een verzamelaar Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Bissing (1873-1956)’, Allard Pierson mededelingen 109 (2014) 2-5.

We don’t have to think of this piece solely as a bad bargain. The forged relief is one of many inauthentic ‘ancient Egyptian’ art works that circulate in the art market today and ended up in museum collections. By studying these unmasked forgeries closely, we can learn a lot about the materials, techniques, and historical limitations of the forger. This knowledge helps experts to understand forgeries better. And that, in turn, is of great importance for our understanding of what true ancient Egyptian art is, since forgeries end up skewing our views a lot. The forged relief in Rijksmuseum van Oudhenden, then, remains an object very much worthy of research. And for that reason, it will stay a part of the museum’s collection.