page_title: Warren Cup
section_title: Modern provenance
hierarchical_section_title: Warren Cup / Modern provenance
caption_attribution_description: English: See Warren Cup. British Museum, GR 1999,0426.1
context_page_description: The Warren Cup is an ancient Greco-Roman silver drinking cup decorated in relief with two images of male same-sex acts. It was purchased by the British Museum for £1.8 million in 1999, the most expensive single purchase by the museum at that time. It is usually dated to the time of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
  The cup is named after its first modern owner, Edward Perry Warren, notable for his art collection, which also included Rodin's The Kiss statue and Cranach's Adam and Eve painting.
context_section_description: Warren purchased the cup in Rome from a dealer in 1911 for £2,000. It was bought in Jerusalem and said to have been found near the city in Battir (ancient Bethther), with coins of the emperor Claudius, possibly buried during the upheavals of the Jewish Revolt.
  We don't know for certain, but it is thought that the Warren Cup was found buried at Bittir, a town a few miles south-west of Jerusalem. How it got to this location is a mystery, but we can make a guess. We can date the making of the cup to around the year 10.  About 50 years later, the Roman occupation of Jerusalem sparked tensions between the rulers and the Jewish community, and in AD 66 that exploded and the Jews took back the city by force. There were violent confrontations, and it is thought that our cup may have been buried at this date by the owner fleeing from the fighting.
  — Neil MacGregor, British Museum Director, A History of the World
  The cup became a prized item in Warren's large art collection, referring to it with friends as the "Holy Grail". The first publication featuring the cup was in 1921, when Gaston Vorberg published a volume of 113 plates of erotic artwork from ancient artefacts. The photographs show the cup in an uncleaned state. The cup was included in Warren's book "A defence of Uranian Love", first published in 1928 under his pseudonym of Arthur Lyon Raile.
  On Warren's death in 1928, the cup became part of the inheritance for Asa Thomas, Warren's secretary and eventual business partner. It was part of the auction of the contents of Lewes House in 1929, but failed to sell and stayed hidden away in the Thomas' attic. The cup was sent for cleaning after the Lewes House auction and photographs taken of the cup in 1931 show that it had been cleaned before that year.
  In November 1952 Harold W. Parsons, an art historian and one of Warren's past companions, took responsibility for selling the cup and approached the New York collector Walter Baker, however Baker was hesitant to proceed. In February 1953 it was posted by Thomas to Walter Baker, however US Customs impounded the box requiring a decision from Washington as to whether to admit it or to prohibit it as pornography. It was refused entry to the US on that basis and it took until October 1954 to be returned to the UK, by which time Thomas had died. After that event, a number of museums declined to buy it. Thomas' widow sold the cup to the dealer John K. Hewett. Hewett offered the cup to Denys Haynes, Keeper of the Greek and Roman Department at the British Museum who then sought an opinion from his friend Lord Crawford, a Trustee of the Museum. However, the decision went no further as they thought that they would never persuade the Museum's Trustees who were chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
  In 1966 the Cup was offered for sale at £6,000 and bought by a private collector abroad.
  In 1998 it was removed from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and sold to a British private collector. The cup was then acquired by its present owner, the British Museum, in 1999 for £1.8 million, with funds provided by the Heritage Lottery Fund, National Art Collections Fund and The British Museum Friends, to prevent its going abroad again. This was, at that time, the most expensive single item ever acquired by the British Museum, and many times the price at which it had been offered to them in the 1950s.
caption: View of the figure in the doorway
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