I am pleased to announce that my paper “Ernst Herzfeld, Joseph Upton and the Artaxerxes Phialai” has just been published in volume 55 of the Metropolitan Museum Journal. This short paper arose from my research in the archives of the Met’s Persian/Iranian expedition, in which I found a letter by Met curator Joseph Upton to his boss Maurice Dimand (head of the Department of Near Eastern Art, which at the time included both ancient and Islamic art) reporting that a dealer had offered to sell him the Artaxerxes phialai (of one which is in the Met).
Achaemenid, Achaemenid
Silver; Height: 1 13/16″ ( 4.6 cm ) Diameter: 11 1/2″ ( 29.2 cm )
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1947 (47.100.84)
http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/324026
This confirms Herzfeld’s own claim that he first saw the vessels with Upton, and makes it all the more unlikely that Herzfeld forged the inscription, as some have alleged in the past.
Incidentally, the Met’s phiale was not acquired by Upton; it was purchased by the museum in 1947 from the estate of Joseph Brummer, who had purchased it in 1940 from Arthur Upham Pope.