Just after the turn of the 19th century, a German naval officer named Johannes Behrens set off on a winding voyage around the Mediterranean, and beyond.
The Bremen-born sailor wasn’t just a military man. He seems to have had an uncanny eye for high-quality antiquities. As he traveled, he bought up remarkable treasures: an intricate Roman silver bowl, exquisite Ancient Egyptian carvings, an ornate Greek mask of bronze.
Several were so impressive that they ended up displayed in some of the world’s most prestigious museums. From the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, spectacular antiquities were credited to the “Behrens collection.”
But new evidence has emerged in recent years that the German sailor never collected the objects attributed to him. In fact, he may never have existed at all.
According to French and U.S. investigators, the objects supposedly bought up by Behrens were actually smuggled by a ring accused of trafficking antiquities out of Egypt.
In late 2023, an elderly art dealer named Serop Simonian, who ran a shop in Hamburg, Germany — not far from where Behrens was supposedly born — was arrested and charged in France with trafficking multiple antiquities attributed to the German sailor’s collection.
Simonian and other alleged members of the ring have denied the allegations, and the investigation is ongoing. Attempts to reach Simonian through his lawyer were unsuccessful.
Though Simonian’s case has been widely reported, a number of objects ostensibly collected by Behrens — including one which sold for over $200,000 — have not been publicly identified, OCCRP’s partner in the Middle East, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), has found.
These objects include a Roman bowl sold by Christie’s auction house in 2010, a Greek marble carved stone slab sold by Christie’s in 2012, and a Greek-Roman bronze mask acquired by Italy’s Sorgente Group Foundation in 2010.
Artifacts Attributed to Behrens
A Roman bowl, dating to around the 3rd Century A.D., sold for over $230,000 in 2010. Featuring a finely hammered relief of a priest dragging a goat to the temple of Minerva while the sun god Helios drives his chariot through the sky above, the piece was attributed to the “Behrens Collection.” The description said the piece was acquired by the family of a woman described as the granddaughter of Johannes Behrens, “a seaman and 1st officer” who was “sailing routes in the Mediterranean to South America” from 1908 to 1939.
A Greek marble funerary stele, dated to the second half of the 1st Century B.C. — and also attributed to the “Johannes Behrens collection” — sold at Christie’s in 2012 for over 60,000 British pounds. The carved stone shows the deceased person accompanied by two women, one of whom is touching her arm in a gesture of farewell.
A bronze mask of the Greek god Papposilenus, a companion to the wine god Dionysus, was acquired by the Italian Sorgente Group Foundation in 2010. The origin information, since removed from the group’s website, said it was in Behrens’ collection before being “sold to a collector from Berlin.”
ARIJ was able to identify the antiquities by searching publicly available data from auction houses and other institutions for mentions of Behrens. None of these three objects have been flagged by U.S. or French investigators, since they are outside their jurisdiction.
A Christie’s spokesperson said they had no comment on the cases but added: “In general, Christie’s takes these matters seriously.”
The Sorgente Group did not respond to requests for comment.
Tess Davis, executive director of The Antiquities Coalition, a campaign group, said that with rare exceptions, antiquities on the market had been obtained illegally at some point — often plundered from archaeological sites, graves, temples or other sources.
“There are surprisingly few legal sources of antiquities, despite a large, legal market,” she said. That created an incentive for criminals to "launder" antiquities by disguising their real origin.
“False documentation, including creating ‘historical’ collections or collectors out of thin air, is crucial to such fraud. After all, it’s much easier to forge a provenance than it is to forge an antiquity.”
King Tut’s Stele
In 2017, the French Egyptologist Marc Gabolde came across a tweet written by fellow Egyptologist Susanna Thomas saying she had been surprised to come across a previously unknown carved stone, known as a stele, dating to the reign of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, in the Louvre Abu Dhabi. His interest was immediately aroused.
A stele, dating to the reign of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, in the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
It was striking that such a fine piece would appear in a prominent institution without scholars being aware of it. (The Louvre Abu Dhabi uses the Louvre brand name and receives other support under a French-Emirati agreement.)
“Does anyone know ANYTHING about this? Abu Dhabi Louvre displaying a lovely stela with #Tutankhamun that we've never heard of before (!!),” Thomas wrote on Twitter, now known as X.
The stele was attributed to an Egyptian dealer, Habib Tawadros, who was said to have sold it to the German sailor Behrens in 1933.
Curious, Gabolde looked into the piece’s origins, but could find no sign of Behrens in any of the public records he reviewed. He expressed his doubts over the ownership of the stele to the Louvre Museum, but received no response.
The French authorities subsequently began their own investigation into the licenses relating to artifacts which had been sold to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, including the King Tut stele.
This culminated with the Louvre’s former president being charged with trafficking in 2022. The following year, a French court rejected his appeal to have the charges dismissed.
The Louvre’s former president, Jean-Luc Martinez.
Simonian, who owned the Dionysos Gallery of Ancient Coins and Antiquities in Hamburg, was arrested in September 2023 and charged with coordinating the illegal sale of artifacts, including the King Tut stele for 8.5 million euros. He has denied the charges.
The French investigation is ongoing, prosecutors told OCCRP. In May last year, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said it had returned 10 objects to Egypt based on information from the case.
The Elusive German Sailor
In his defense, Simonian claimed his family had collected the objects in the 1970s, and produced documents showing Behrens had purchased them legitimately from Tawadros.
Tawadros does indeed appear to have dealt in antiquities — he is referenced in books and documents from the time, including a 1950s advertisement for his shop in “The Egyptian Tourist’s Companion.” But a source from the French investigation, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the investigators could not find any evidence Tawadros was active in the 1930s.
In New York, another scandal broke out when investigators found evidence that a golden coffin of the priest Nedjemankh — the centerpiece of a 2018 show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — may have been looted. The piece was removed from display and sent back to Egypt before the show was even over.
In a letter to Egypt’s minister of antiquities, obtained by ARIJ, New York’s district attorney wrote that its investigators had found the license Simonian claimed was valid had a number of inconsistencies, including mismatched dates and a government stamp that said “AR Egypt,” though Egypt was known as the “United Arab Republic” at that time.
The golden coffin of the priest Nedjemankh was sent back to Egypt.
Since the investigations became public, the origin of other prominent objects attributed to Behrens have also been called into doubt.
These include a painted portrait, used as an Egyptian funerary mask, which the Swiss billionaire Jean-Claude Gandur bought for nearly 1 million euros. In 2022, Gandur said he could find no evidence that Behrens existed and that he now believed the painting’s origins were forged.
An ancient table leg with the head of a goat carved into it, attributed to Behrens, was acquired by Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts in 2010. The listing now notes that media reports have “cast doubts on the veracity of this ownership history.”
“The U.S. State Department revealed that documents on the ownership history of the piece are of questionable authenticity, which may indicate new archaeological plundering,” Karen Frascona, the museum's director of marketing and communications, told ARIJ.
Byzantine-era painting fragments depicting the Biblical crossing of the Red Sea, acquired by New York’s Met in 2014, were also attributed to the sailor. They have since been returned to Egypt.
Davis, of The Antiquities Coalition, said that developing “a stronger, more transparent legal market would absolutely hurt the black market” for antiquities.
But firmer regulation would be needed, too. At the moment, buyers of antiquities don’t benefit from the same anti-money laundering protections that are standard for other high-risk goods such as jewelry and precious metals, she said.
“Antiquities can easily surpass the value of a car or real estate, but unlike them, good titles can be incredibly difficult to prove,” she said.
“If buyers and sellers are treating art and antiquities as an asset, the law must as well.”
