NY Times – In November 2013, Nora von Achenbach, curator at the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Hamburg, Germany, examined the catalog for an upcoming auction by the Paris-based dealer Boisgirard-Antonini. The glossy pages offered a bevy of antiquities for sale: bronze figurines, jewelry and a statue from ancient Egypt estimated at more than 300,000 euros, or almost half a million dollars. But von Achenbach was interested in a pale marble tablet, carved with arabesques, vines and Persian script. Lot 104, an “important epigraphic panel with interlacings from the palace of Mas’ud III,” was dated to the 12th century, from the capital of the Ghaznavid Empire, in what is today Afghanistan. – read more
