The “Guennol Grasshopper” Sells Despite Provenance Concerns
The “Guennol Grasshopper”, courtesy of the Apollo Art Auctions catalogue.
On 27 July 2025, a 3,300-year-old carved wooden grasshopper was sold at auction in London for £340,000 ($455,000), despite growing concerns that it was looted from King Tutankhamun’s tomb.
It has long been an open secret among Egyptologists that Harold Carter, who excavated King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, pilfered certain of its treasures for himself – despite the Egyptian government’s designating its contents as property of the Egyptian people. Proof of this supposition came in 2022 with the publication of letters from Howard Carter’s associate, as reported in The Observer.
The “Guennol Grasshopper” is believed by many to be among the treasures pilfered by Carter. These concerns about the artifact’s provenance led auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s to decline to sell the Guennol Grasshopper. The piece was sold instead by the smaller auction house Apollo Art Auctions in London, which defended its decision by noting that there is “no documented evidence” that the grasshopper comes from King Tutankhamun’s tomb, calling the supposition “a recent scholarly hypothesis and not an established fact” which “does not constitute legal or historical proof.”
While it is true that a legal restitution claim would require the production of evidence that does not appear to be available, we have seen time and again that public outcry over ethical and moral scruples over a piece’s provenance has proved more effective, in many cases, in undermining the commercial sale of a cultural artifact than strict legal arguments. The latter may be missing in this case, but the weight of opinion coming from Egyptologists appears to be that the Grasshopper “must” be from King Tutankhamun’s tomb; the piece is from the same era, and is in a state of preservation consonant with being sealed in an airtight tomb until (relatively) recent years.
If true, this creates a powerful moral argument for repatriation to Egypt, even if UK law would require active proof of illicit origin to ground a legal repatriation claim. Apollo Art Auctions was quick to stress that no such proof has been presented in the object’s “80+ years of public history”; the auction house’s catalogue (page 28) notes that the item was first published in 1948, in the Brooklyn Museum Bulletin. The Guennol Grasshopper was part of the famed collection built by Alastair Bradley and Edith Martin in the 1940s (Guennol being the Welsh word for “Martin”). Other spectacular works from the Guennol collection include a 5,000-year-old lioness sculpture which fetched a record-breaking $57.1 million in 2007. The Guennol grasshopper’s lower auction price possibly reflects the factual and legal differences at play; while we know exactly where and when the Grasshopper was excavated, the Lioness’s precise excavation site and circumstances are not known; and the ownership laws of Egypt differ from those of Iraq. The date of Iraq’s patrimony law, which establishes the country’s ownership of undiscovered archeological artifacts within its borders, is widely believed to be 1936 — and the Lioness was documented prior to that date. Meanwhile, there is a US court case (United States v. Schultz) establishing the date of Egypt’s comparable law to be 1983. The Grasshopper was out of Egypt long before that date, making any claim dependent on production of persuasive proof that Howard Carter “stole” the work. Even though such proof appears to be illusive, the ethical questions raised could possibly have impacted the price, and it remains to be seen whether they will impact future transfers.
The controversy and public dispute about selling an artifact like the Guennol Grasshopper, with such a long-documented and verified provenance going back several decades and a long history of public exhibition and study, demonstrates the importance of understanding the international context from a 360-degree perspective in making sound decisions about how to handle ancient works. The ArtRisk Group members have experience in substantiating the provenance of antiquities to assess the legality of owning and selling them. We have also faced numerous less clear-cut situations when a work’s history is likely to be so culturally problematic as to compromise its sale, even when legal title is secure. We will therefore keep a keen eye on the Guennol Grasshopper and comparable cases in future which engage a mix of cultural and legal provenance issues.
About Jane Levine
Partner and co-founder JANE LEVINE has extensive experience at the intersection of the international art market, art crime, and regulatory compliance. Jane is a former federal prosecutor who spent ten years as an Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, followed by a thirteen-year stint at Sotheby’s as Chief Global Compliance Counsel and Head of Government Affairs. Jane was appointed by President Obama to serve on the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, and currently serves as a member of the Board for US Committee for the Blue Shield working to safeguard cultural heritage around the globe. In addition, Jane has been teaching Art and Cultural Heritage Law at Columbia Law School for the past twenty years. Read more about Jane’s career here.