Grasshopper relic for sale. But was it stolen from King Tut’s tomb?

The grasshopper, just a few inches long and made from painted wood with ivory wings, is expected to sell for about half a million pounds. But the row surrounding its sale is shining a light on a gap in the regulations covering the trade in historic artefacts.

When, in 1923, the British archaeologist Howard Carter forced entry into the sarcophagus where the boy pharaoh’s body lay, he took many ornate objects. Some still remain unaccounted for.

This led to an international market in items that might have come from the tomb as Egyptomania took hold following the discovery. It also gave birth to the legend of a curse on the tomb, after several of those associated with the dig came to grief. Carter himself died 17 years later, at the age of 64.

“There is a legal market for well-­documented Egyptian material, but potential buyers should know that the grasshopper is a tainted object,” said the specialist Egyptologist Tom Hardwick. “It has been consistently acknowledged and marketed as coming from Tutankhamun’s tomb, and I think it belongs to Egypt. Now that the grasshopper has appeared on the open market, any purchaser will face increasing legal and moral pressure to return it.”

Before the Apollo auction house listed the grasshopper in its Legend of Tutankhamun fine ancient art sale, it paid the Art Loss Register (ALR) to check its history.

“In line with UK law, any ­restitution claim would require proof of an illicit origin, illegal export and timely action, none of which have been presented during its 80-plus years of public history,” an Apollo spokesperson said. “A certificate of clearance was issued confirming that the item is not listed as stolen or looted.”

The artefact, which goes under the hammer of Bargain Hunt regular Lindsey Gundersen at lunchtime on Sunday, is known as the Guennol Grasshopper and would originally have been filled with kohl or perfume, with the ivory wings closing as a lid. It has already excited the interest of several international telephone bidders despite, as Apollo emphasises, no clear connection to King Tut.

“While the object dates to the time of Tutankhamun, there is no ­evidence directly linking it to what Carter called the ‘wonderful things’ in his tomb, and it does not appear in any official excavation records,” the spokesperson added. “References in later academic works are speculative, and it was exported from Egypt in the 1930s, decades before the 1970 Unesco Convention and Egypt’s 1983 antiquities law.”

James Ratcliffe, general counsel and director of recoveries at the ALR, said Apollo requested its top-tier level of research on the grasshopper, scouring what he called the largest database of objects and art in private hands. “This grasshopper is not listed there or on the Interpol database, which is actually smaller but also important to check. We also reviewed the provenance and looked into information about its previous sales,” he said.

The key issue, Ratcliffe added, was to establish whether Egypt had made a serious claim on the grasshopper and requested its return. “It’s been out there for decades, quite openly,” he said. “There was some chuntering, as it was consigned for sale, but as no one asked for it, it’s not something we can act on.

“Carter did take things from the tomb, it’s fairly much agreed – but whether he took this item I can’t possibly know, although it has been sold several times with this origin story attached.”

Ratcliffe argues that many objects may have been sold with a spurious link to the tomb: “I have a horrible feeling if we looked into it, it would be similar to the number of supposed reliquaries of saints’ bones out there.”

If proof is found of an illegal sale or an association with a dealer in illicit material, the register can refuse a sale certificate, Ratcliffe said. “In this case we didn’t find that. The Egyptians have a very successful department working on the restitution of such objects, but we have no evidence for a claim on this.”

The German Egyptologist Christian Loeben, curator at Hanover’s Museum August Kestner, said the grasshopper should be returned to Egypt regardless of available proof. “It’s a moral question,” he told the New York Times last week, adding that he is “quite convinced” that the grasshopper comes from the famous tomb, as its style is of “exactly the period” of the pharaoh’s reign and because its pristine condition indicates it was kept in side a sealed chamber.

Apollo’s spokesperson said: “We chose to offer the piece for sale because of its historical and cultural importance. It deserves to be appreciated, and we hope it will enter a public collection where it can be responsibly cared for and accessible to all.”

About 5,398 items from Tutankh­amun’s tomb are due to be displayed in Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum, opening this year.

Photograph by Apollo Art Auctions