Ancient treasure auction in Indonesia
An ancient treasure trove salvaged from a 1,000-year-old shipwreck
found by Indonesian fishermen went under the hammer in Jakarta Wednesday
with a minimum price of 80 million dollars.
Imperial Chinese pottery. AFP |
Belgian treasure-hunter Luc Heymans said the haul was one of the
biggest found in Asia and was comparable to the most valuable shipwreck
ever found anywhere, that of the Atocha, a Spanish vessel which sank off
Florida in 1622.
It includes 271,000 pieces such as rubies, pearls, gold jewellery,
Fatimid rock-crystal, Iranian glassware and exquisite Chinese imperial
porcelain dating back to the end of the first millennium, or around 976
AD.
“At the time there was a lot of trade going on between Arabia and
India and coming down to Java and Sumatra,” said Heymans, who led the
salvage effort and subsequent battles with Indonesian officialdom to
bring the treasure to light.
“But we think there must have been an ambassador on board because so
many pieces are imperial Chinese porcelain.” Descending for the first
time onto the wreck site north of Cirebon, West Java, in 2004, the
veteran diver said he couldn’t believe what appeared out of the gloom on
the sea floor.
An ancient gold handle of a dagger with an Arabic inscription
displayed together with other gold jewellery, rubies and other
precious items, part of a treasure haul brought to the surface
from an ancient shipwreck, at a showroom in south Jakarta. AFP |
“The site was 40 metres (130 feet) by 40 metres and it was just a
mountain of porcelain. You couldn’t see any wood,” he said.
And not just any porcelain. The pieces include the largest known vase
from the Liao Dynasty (907-1125) and famous Yue Mise wares from the Five
Dynasties (907-960), with the green colouring exclusive to the emperor.
Around 11,000 pearls, 4,000 rubies, 400 dark red sapphires and more
than 2,200 garnets were also pulled from the depths by Heymans and his
team of international divers.
It took 22,000 dives to bring it all up but Heymans said the salvage
work, from February 2004 to October 2005, was the easy part.
“All the major problems began after we got the stuff on shore,” he
said. The police arrested two of the divers even though Heymans’
company, Cosmix Underwater Research Ltd., and his local partner,
Paradigma Putra Sejathera PT, had painstakingly arranged survey and
excavation licences.
The divers spent a month behind bars before the mix-up was resolved.
There were also run-ins with the Indonesian navy, efforts by rivals
to move in on the wreck, a year of litigation and two years of waiting
while Indonesia drafted new regulations to govern such work.
Some of Heymans’ backers who covered him to the tune of 10 million
dollars began to worry that their investment would be lost at the bottom
of the Java Strait, he said.
“I feel some relief now because so many people told me I would never
be able to get the permits and get the stuff out of the country,” he
said. He adds, however, that it was one of the most difficult ordeals of
his career. By coincidence, officials last week said another treasure
hunter who is well-known to Indonesia, Michael Hatcher, is under
investigation for allegedly plundering valuable Chinese porcelain from a
new wreck. Marine and Fisheries Ministry official Adji Sularso said the
probe came after authorities seized 2,360 items dating from the Ming
Dynasty (1368-1644) which Hatcher was allegedly trying to smuggle out of
the country.
The porcelain was loaded in two ships that were intercepted in waters
off West Java in September, he added. No charges have been laid but
police said Friday that Hatcher was a fugitive and alerted border
officials to block him from attempting to flee the country.
His current whereabouts are unknown. Hatcher, who was reportedly born
in Britain but grew up as an orphan in Australia, is believed to have
made 17 million dollars from auctioning gold ingots and 160,000 pieces
of porcelain salvaged from wreck found in the Riau islands in the
mid-1980s.
Under the terms of Heymans’ arrangement with the Indonesian
government, which declared some of his treasure to be of national
heritage, the state will take 50 percent of the proceeds of Wednesday’s
auction. The remainder will be shared among the salvagers.
AFP |