The Newells

At some point after 1924 but prior to 1967 the Neo-Sumerian offering stand was in the possession of either Adra Newell or Edward T. Newell. While it was Adra Newell who bequested the offering stand to Wheaton, no extant records indicate whether the object was collected by her or her husband. This meant tracking the object's aquisition by the Newell family quite a challenge. 

Edward Newell is considered to be the most prolific collector of coins in American history. He served as president of the Numismatic Society for 29 years and was the worlds leading expert of coins from the era of Alexander the Great. Further, his collection did include some coins from Mesopotamia. However, Newell was a coin collector, not an offering stand collector. While it would not be entirely unlikely that he aquired an offering stand from Mesopotamia, there is no concrete evidence to suggest that he did.

Very Little is known about Adra Newell. The only availible information we have about her comes from the information in the bequest file at wheaton college. While there is no evidence to suggest that it was she who collected the offering stand, her meticulous detailing of the bequested items suggests that she may have been a collector herself. This means that it might have been Adra who collected the Offering Stand.

Ultimately no one can know who originally aquired the Neo-Sumerian Offering Stand. All of Edward Newell's documents, including his personal correspondance with Adra Newell, were donated to the American Numismatic Society. After a few years of storage, the ANS destroyed these files. Without any relevant documentation about either the seller or the buyer, there is no way to trace where or when the Offering Stand was bought from the looters and aquired by the Newells. At best, this aquisition can be narrowed down to a 43 year window beween the objects alleged excavation and its donation to Wheaton. While this is an unsatisfying result to my provenance research, I feel as if I exhausted the research opportunities availible to me.

Text Sources

American Numismatic Society. "Edward T. Newell" http://numismatics.org/Archives/Newellbio