Lex Sacra

Lex Sacra

Sometime in 1981 or earlier, looters broke into the sanctuary of Zeus Meilichios in the ancient ruins of Selinunte, Italy, and stole this 5th century BCE lex sacra, an inscribed lead tablet.

The lex sacra was acquired by the Getty in 1981 as a gift from donor Dr Max Gerchik, a Los Angeles doctor who donated thousands of other artifacts, including multiple objects with inscriptions suggesting that they been found in Selinunte.

Gerchik is believed to have been an associate of Getty curator Jiri Frel, and may have played a role in Frel's donation scheme, in which wealthy locals received tax write-offs from the Getty for straw "donations" of antiquities that many never saw or owned. Frel used the donation scheme to build the Getty's study collection – objects of archaeological interest but generally not worthy of display. Gerchik is credited as the source of 12,556 objects in the Getty collection as of 2024, many of them archaeological fragments of only scientific interest.

The lex sacra was offered to the Getty in six fragments, each with hexameter text. This sacred text gave prescriptions for some rites to be performed to cancel a contamination caused by a murder. It is a kind of purification rite. The murderer would be persecuted by the avenging spirits, alastor, demons hurled by the victim in his pursuit. To stop the persecution and achieve purification, the guilty party needed to make the sacrifices and rites indicated in the lex sacra.

The lex sacra was approved for acquisition the Getty's director John Walsh. Several scholars, including Dirk Obbink, examined or translated its sections to determine, through textual analysis, that it referred to Zeus Meilichos and likely derived from Selinunte.

In 1992, Marion True decided that the Getty would return the lex sacra to Italy in the wake of an October 1991 Rome conference on looted antiquities where it was discussed.

It was most recently on display in the Palazzo Milo Pappalardo, Trapani, Sicily, together with several other items once looted from the Selinunte archaeological site.

1

Information Artifact – books, seals, plaques, scrolls

Greek

J. Paul Getty Museum

81.A1.140.2.1

Italy

Damien Huffer

Jason Felch