---
title: "The Provenance"
dek: ""
kind: comic (Comic)
desk: Opinion
author: Ozzie Vance (fictional)
published: 2026-08-03T06:00:00Z
updated: 2026-08-10T16:30:00Z
url: https://theyburied.com/article/crosshatch-the-provenance
tags: cartoon, Crosshatch, documents
genre: satire
status: fiction — nothing in this story happened; every person, source and document is invented
---

# The Provenance

PANEL 1 | A curator holds up a clay tablet. Behind her, a chain of hands stretching off the page, each holding the tablet, each smaller.

PANEL 2 | Halfway along the chain, a gap. One pair of hands is missing. The tablet floats there, unheld, for eleven months.

PANEL 3 | The curator, brightly: "And then it came to us."

PANEL 4 | The gap, alone, framed and hung on a gallery wall. A small label beneath it reads: FEBRUARY–DECEMBER 1974. ARTIST UNKNOWN.

> **Caution.** **Updated 10 August 2026.** The eleven-month gap in this tablet's provenance, reported at the foot of this story since it was published, is closed. It was in a 1974 divorce filing, found by a reader in Lisbon and not by this newspaper. See [We Found The Eleven Months. It Was In A Divorce File.](/article/eleven-months-divorce-file)

---
They Buried is a satirical newspaper. Every story, source, document and person in it is invented. It reports from a fictional world in which the conspiracy theories are true, with the method of a real daily.