A grasshopper, an ancient King Tutankhamun, and $455,000, what could these three things possibly have in common? There is a connection here, as this intricate grasshopper that has allegedly been seen looted from the tomb of Tutankhamun was sold at auction in London for £340,000 ($455,000). Sounds unbelievable, right? Someone surely believed it, as the “Guennol Grasshopper,” after drawing considerable scrutiny ahead of its July 27 sale at Apollo Auctions, still sold for a decent price within the estimate.
Albeit, going by the last price it sold for according to the auction house’s catalogue, the grasshopper notes it last sold for $1.2 million. Still, the new owner surely would be grinning from ear to ear on getting his/her hands on The Guennol Grasshopper, which doubles as a cosmetics container. The three-and-a-half-inch-long object is made of wood and ivory and is as old as 1350–1349 B.C.E., remarkably well preserved and in good shape. The object, according to Apollo magazine, was discovered by Howard Carter, the archaeologist who discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922.
From there, it went into the hands of Egyptian dealer Maurice Nahman, New York dealer Joseph Brummer in 1936, and then entered the collection of Alastair Bradley Martin through Brummer’s estate sale in 1948, per Artnet. The most recent consignors are Middle Eastern royals, the heirs of Sheikh Saud al-Thani.
There has been a lot of conjecture over the ill-fated grasshopper’s origin. Many believe it is, after all, from the tomb of Tutankhamun; still, Apollo Auctions maintains that the grasshopper was not looted from Tut’s tomb. One cannot overlook that both Christie’s and Sotheby’s reportedly declined to offer the piece due to concerns over its provenance. There’s no official excavation record to confirm it, and Apollo Auctions claims it was cleared by the Art Loss Register before sale.
