Edward Safani, the father of Alan Safani, was the founder of Safani Gallery, one of the oldest existing galleries of ancient art in the United States. Edward Safani was a noted authority on Islamic art, ancient glass and the art of the ancient near east and was often asked by museums, auction houses and dealers to authenticate ancient works of art.

He sold ancient art from Greece, Rome, Egypt and the Near East to major museums throughout the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Stuttgart Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Ishiguro Museum in Tokyo, the Freer Gallery and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

He was born in Teheran in 1912 and traveled by train to Paris as a teenager to work as an apprentice for his uncle, Ayoub Rabenou, who was a noted Islamic art dealer. During those early years he sold Islamic ceramics and ancient near eastern art to the Louvre, the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Mr. Safani established Safani Gallery in 1946 and ran the gallery until his death in 1998.

Cycladic head of an idol exhibited by Edward Safani in a ground breaking exhibit of Cycladic art in 1983. The idol later sold at a Sotheby's New York auction on December 2, 1989 for 2 million dollars and was printed on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

The same head as it appearead in the catalogue of "The Art of the Cyclades, An Exhibition of the Early Cycladic Period. 3000-2000 BC," which took place at Safani Gallery from May 7 to June 18, 1983.