Hobby Lobby stores filed a $7 million lawsuit claiming a former professor from the United Kingdom’s Oxford University stole ancient Bible fragments from the university and sold them to the chain store.
Hobby Lobby alleges that 64-year-old former Oxford professor of papyrology Dirk Obbink sold the chain fragments of papyrus and ancient objects valued at over $7 million between 2010 and 2013. But Obbink is accused of stealing the fragments from the Oxyrhynchus collection in the Sackler Library, resulting in the professor’s suspension.
“Some of the fragments were stolen by Obbink from the Egyptian Exploration Society, the custodian of the largest collection of ancient papyri in the world,” Hobby Lobby said in the lawsuit.
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri is a collection of ancient manuscripts that were discovered at the spot where inhabitants of the city of Oxyrhynchus dumped their garbage. The collection includes fragments of documents written in Greek, ancient Egyptian, Coptic, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, and other languages and dates back as far as the third century BC.
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Hobby Lobby displayed the fragments it purchased at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., which was founded by the deeply Christian founders of Hobby Lobby, the Green family, in 2017.
But the EES, a British nonprofit excavation organization that owns the collection, says 11 of the 13 missing fragments were sold “without authorization” to Hobby Lobby by Obbink, a charge the professor denies.
“The allegations made against me that I have stolen, removed or sold items owned by the Egypt Exploration Society collection at the University of Oxford are entirely false,” Obbink said. “I would never betray the trust of my colleagues and the values which I have sought to protect and uphold throughout my academic career in the way that has been alleged. I am aware that there are documents being used against me which I believe have been fabricated in a malicious attempt to harm my reputation and career.”
The professor was arrested in March of last year but was released pending further investigation.
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The Museum of the Bible has since agreed to return the 13 fragments to the EES, the organization said in a statement.
“The Board of Trustees of the MOTB has accepted the EES claim to ownership of the thirteen pieces identified to date, and is arranging to return them to the EES. The EES is grateful to the MOTB for its co-operation, and has agreed that the research on these texts by scholars under the auspices of the MOTB will receive appropriate recognition when the texts are published in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri series,” the EES statement read.
