Kafkaesque drama unfolds off Java as foreign divers find treasure
Kafkaesque drama unfolds off Java as foreign divers find treasure
Sebastien Blanc, Agence France-Presse/Jakarta
In the blue waters of the Java Sea, a drama is unfolding around
an ancient cargo of sunken treasure, but with corruption and
bureaucracy never far from the surface in Indonesia, the tale
owes more to Franz Kafka than Indiana Jones.
A team of divers, among them two Australians, two Britons, two
French, a Belgian and a German, has been working for months to
excavate a vessel laden with rare ceramics which sank more than
1,000 years ago off Indonesia's shores.
Their finds, including artifacts from China's Five Dynasties
period from 907 to 960 AD and ancient Egypt, are already causing
a stir among archaeologists who say the cargo sheds new light on
how ancient merchant routes were forged.
But with items expected to fetch millions of dollars in
European auction houses, the work has become embroiled in a murky
dispute between the divers and Indonesian authorities over who
will profit from the sub-aquatic swag.
According to the divers, the excavation was brought to an
abrupt halt last week when an Indonesian navy vessel pulled
alongside their diving platform.
"We were taken from the barge and brought back to land. We
don't have permission to leave the country or Jakarta," said
French diver Daniel Visnikar.
An official report by Indonesia's Agency for the Protection of
Underwater Heritage seen by AFP accuses the operation of
"employing illegal foreign workers who are excavating precious
sunken artifacts".
The divers deny they are acting illegally and insist, despite
their run-in with the navy, they were working with the
cooperation of the Indonesian government.
"We have all the necessary documents to carry out the diving,
which always takes place in the presence of Indonesian government
representatives," Visnikar said.
The boat at the center of the storm rests 54 metres below the
surface, approximately 130 nautical miles from Jakarta. Early
material recovered from the site has whetted the appetite of
overseas experts.
"A 10th century wreck is very rare, there are only a few,"
said Jean-Paul Desroches, a curator at the Guimet Museum in
Paris. He has studied photographs of the findings and describes
the artifacts as "extremely interesting".
He says the wreck and its cargo offers clues to how traders
using the Silk Road linking China to Europe and the Middle East,
used alternative sea routes as China's merchants moved south
because of invasions from the north.
This evidence includes delicate crockery, glassware and rubies
and sapphires.
"It seems to be one of the largest boats containing ceramics
ever found," said Luc Heymans, the "European-funded" project's
Belgian director.
He said that according to an official agreement, Indonesia
will receive 50 percent of proceeds from the sale of the
treasures. He insisted the scheme was legal.
"We have filled all our requirements to Indonesia. They have a
complete list of everything that has been extracted from the ship
and brought to Jakarta," Heymans said.
Laws governing the protection of Indonesia's antiquities have
long been a gray area, with the country's endemic culture of
corruption encouraging widespread plunder involving, in many
cases, police and military.
It was not possible to check the validity of permits being
used by the Java Sea wreck team, but diver Jean-Paul Blancan
insists the reason they incurred the navy's wrath is because they
used legal instead of corrupt channels.
"We are certainly one of the only teams to have worked
completely within the law. That must upset a few people. Here
nobody works like that," he said.
So far some 60,000 of 160,000 items contained in the wreck
have been retrieved and placed a hangar in Jakarta, according to
the divers. They are likely to remain there until the dispute is
settled.
The divers say treasures are expected to be shown between 2006
and 2007 in an auction organized by Christie's, which has valued
the cargo at several million dollars.