Ugh.
For the field of papyrology this may be a moment of reckoning. One of their most distinguished luminaries—a MacArthur “genius grant” winner, no less—is alleged to have sold antiquities that he did not own. When I spoke to Nongbri in June he told me “If this isn’t a one-off thing, and there are more records of sales, it becomes harder to believe that other scholars who work closely with Dirk Obbink didn’t know this kind of thing was going on.” The scale of the problem, as Nongbri notes, is still undetermined. If items were illicitly leaving the Oxyrhynchus collection and being funneled through Baidun it’s possible that other items (and indeed dealers) are involved. Perhaps this is the tip of the iceberg. It’s also possible that other Oxyrhynchus papyri were sold to different U.S. buyers. Regardless of the scale of the problem, the fact that items could leave the collection at all demonstrates that there is a need for greater transparency in the administration of shared intellectual and cultural heritage.
Scholars… Some of you need Jesus. Your egos and your sense of entitlement are astonishing.