Matti Friedman reminisces about Shlomo Mousaieff, who died last week at the age of ninety-two:
Shlomo Moussaieff . . . will be remembered as a purveyor of jewels to the rich and famous and as one of the world’s foremost collectors of biblical antiquities. I will remember him as one of the most enigmatic and fascinating people I have ever interviewed.
The Herzliya hotel suite where Moussaieff spent much of his time was an Ali Baba’s cave: Canaanite oil lamps, Babylonian curse bowls on the coffee table, a pair of bronze lions with ivory eyes. Behind an unremarkable poster leaning against a wall was an inscribed tablet that came, he said, from the land of Sheba. . . .
Moussaieff was born in 1923 to an important Jerusalem family with roots in the Central Asian city of Bukhara. He was one of twelve children. A dyslexic and a failure in school, he incurred the wrath of his father and ran away from home as a teenager, living on the streets for a time. The persona he acquired then stayed with him: he was a multimillionaire who lived in the toniest part of London, but he put on no airs. He was a merchant, a street-brawler, and a Jew. He seemed proud of all three. . . .
By his own count, his collection included 60,000 pieces. His goal, he said, was to amass physical evidence proving the accuracy of the biblical narrative, and he disdained scholars and archaeologists whose work undermined that idea.
Read more on Tablet: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/192075/shlomo-moussaieff-obituary