I don’t know who would make the determination. That would just be my general rule of thumb.
To some extent that’s true; IIRC the Elgin Marbles were sold to Elgin by the Turkish rulers of Greece. Recently the Italians returned an obelisk to Ethiopia and this might be a similar example that should be rectified. On the other hand, if a Calabrian farmer dug up a statue of Aphrodite and sold it to a passing English Grand Tourist in the 19th century, without violating the laws then in effect, then that’s a different matter.
Similarly with private collections built by the rich–a private pleasure becomes a public resource (though undeniably also a monument to and a and tax write-off for the donor).
Finders keepers. We grabbed them fair and square. If the countries of origin, if they still exist, want them back, they can pay for them. Modern-day looting is to be discouraged, and if a museum wants to give back an artifact, they should. But give back everything ever found to a country or government that didn’t exist…no freaking way! We came, we saw, we conquered. Deal with it. When Egypt gets powerful enough to conquer the English, then they can get their artifacts back.
Well, there’s a neatly documented succession from Prussia to Germany and from the USSR to Russia. It gets hairier when a nation vanishes from the map through total disintegration and/or conquest, especially when it happened so long ago that nobody is quite sure of the details.
I am reminded of an anecdote that was no doubt treasured by the Greeks as evidence that the Romans, however militarily superior they were, were a bunch of goobers:
As I understand it, the Elgin marbles were bought from the then current rulers of Greece at the time. Why on Earth should we return them? The calls for their return by the Greeks are especially ironic seeing as before Elgin, the Parthenon was being used as a quarry by the locals. Cultural heritage indeed.
To which the counterargument is that the ‘Elgin’ Marbles are now an element of another major set/monument/site, namely the British Museum. It’s not as if it is obvious that an intact Acropolis would be more important a cultural site than an intact BM. Both are sites of world importance which can tell us much about the cultures that produced them.
Indeed, the Marbles are an excellent example of how the cultural significance of an artifact is never just a matter of original context, as a serious case can be made for saying that the significance and artistic impact of the Marbles were actually greater in nineteenth-century London than they had ever been in ancient Athens. Seeing them only as sculptures from the Parthenon is to miss half their importance. Retaining them in London makes it easier for the average tourist to begin to think about those bigger issues.
More or less my point of view, though I would make allowances for objects that are still sacred (thanks sven for reminding us of that) and are legitimately wanted back on those grounds. If by some bizarre circumstance there were a resurgence of Mediterranean polytheism and the sculptures and other artworks become sacred again, I’d have to question the validity of that.
Pfft. Today, it’s artifacts, tomorrow, they’ll be demanding their ancestral lands back, etc. Look, people fought and died for arbitrary geographical boundaries! How can we denigrate the memory of such bravery by redrawing…arbitrary geographical boundaries!
Seriously, while I can dig giving back that which clearly isn’t ours, and a “theirs” is identified and has continuously occupied said arbitrary geographical boundaries since the artifacts were…obtained. But a few dudes sitting in tents saying “Man, we used to be the Ancientarians, at least until 5000 years ago, anyway, so man, give us our stuff!” doesn’t necessarily constitute a repatriation of world treasure, just sending it down a rathole. This information should be carefully determined.
Besides, other works of art go into the public domain after just a few decades, and you’re not going to find Mr. Elginmarbles’ great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren, just some despotic asshole ruling a third-world country with no viable means for preservation trying to stake his claim as part of a broader egomaniacal agenda.
Oops! I didn’t mean to call the leader of Greece egomaniacal, or Greece a thirdworld country…I was referring to places other than that example, in general. Sorry! :smack:
I’d kinda like to have that Hollywood sign in my back yard. Mind if I steal it?
Be my guest.
To me, the major draw back of shipping antiquities around the world is the loss of context. Just what does an Egyptian mummy mean when seen in a children’s museum in the US? To many people, it’s the novelty/voyerism of seeing a long dead body displayed out in public that attracts, because very little can actually be learned about the Egyptians from walking by a display like this.
The Elgin marbles are an excellent example of this. What can you actually learn by seeing them in England, other then the fact that Thomas Bruce decided to take them home with him. These carvings would have much more meaning if seen in the context of the Parthenon.
I’m guessing someone would respond that they reproductions that have been made to fill in the gaping holes should do the trick. If that’s true, then why wouldn’t a reproduction work in London, and return the originals.
Of course what does anything mean when viewed by children in a museum? I’m not sure that we should let our imagined reactions of the impressionable and of the intellectually less endowed* have too much bearing on whether it is right to display it.
*Not saying anything against children, but it’s an obvious fact that they’re generally less intelligent than adults, just as they are generally shorter and smaller.
Except- if they had stayed in Greece, they would very very likely not be here for anyone to admire now. Bruce didn’t steal so much as rescue.The current Greek government has no connection to the ancient City-state that once owned these, thus they have no claim. *The fact that your ass is currently parked on the land where something was once made give you no moral claim to it.
*
Now, if YOU can say “that belongs to me- or my parents” then you have a claim. other wise- too bad, so sad, SOL (which stands for Statute of Limitations, of course!)
You guys seem to be forgetting the major reason so many ancient artifacts are in European and American museums - because Americans and Europeans funded and ran the archaeological digs that uncovered them. Should the, for example, Iraqi government have the right to demand back something which the British dug up in the first place, just because it was on what is now their soil?
The copyright expires after a few decades. The original work continues to be the physical property of the owner for as long as it exists.
I have the legal right to make and sell as many copies of Van Gogh’s View Through The Asylum Window as I want. However, the original canvas is the property of the Philadelphia Museum Of Art. If I tried to take that canvas home, I would be charged with trying to steal an object valued in the millions and I would go to jail for a long time.
Working in a museum, I know first-hand how difficult (and sometimes impossible) it is to establish provenance.
In the early days of our museum, we were supported by several wealthy collectors who travelled all over the world, bringing back with them “souvineers” which they donated to the museum. Who knows how they were acquired? Records were sparsely kept.
We have a set of dirty linen strips, ominously labled “mummy wrappings”; we have human remains, sculptures, incredibly ornate brassworks of Chinese origins; we have fossils, priceless Native American artifacts and a host of other historical oddities. It’s entirely possible that much of this came from looting (which in earlier days was just called “finding.”) We certainly couldn’t prove it one way or another.
I’d gander to say that most of the time, the reason why you don’t hear of more of these battles is that many museums don’t know what is in each other’s collections. You only hear of high-profile items, not things packed away in storage, known only to staff (and they ain’t tellin’!) I’d bet the farm that most museums with large collections have things which “properly” belong elsewhere.
Museums sometimes quietly spat amongst themselves over who owns what. I have a collegue who works in another local museum who goes off on a profanity-laden tirade whenever the British Museum is mentioned in her presence. She claims that her museum loaned an important piece to the BM about a hundred years ago, and have been fighting to get it back ever since. (Again, a problem of paperwork.)
We also have decendants of donors who claim that great-grandad did not give an artifact to the musuem, but merely loaned it, and they want it back.
Generally, it comes down to “posession is nine-tenths of the law.” In lack of evidence, an item generally stays where it is, which is why most of these disputes never see the inside of a court room.
Not that we don’t try to establish provenance. I have spent thousands of hours pouring over old record books, letters and whatnot trying to find a mention of artifacts we cannot identify. (I ran screaming in joy down the stairs one time when I found a wadded-up letter-- used as stuffing to pad out a vase-- identifying an item which had always been a mystery.)
A few major flaws to this argument. One, if these items were stolen from a farmer’s field or taken from individuals, these individuals are long since dead. If we can find the relatives or descendents of these individuals and they want to bring a charge against the British Museum (or whomever) then I may support you. However, a government cannot simply make a claim of ownership over an object that may have been stolen a few hundred years ago from an individual who lived on the land they now govern.
Two, your claim of geography is meaningless. The people who make up Iraq today are not the same people who made up ancient Mesopotamia. Same with ancient Greece and modern Greece. There have been millenia of interbreeding and Iraqis are no more Mesopotamian than the Chinese person in your OP. Just because some people in a land a few thousand years ago made things does not mean the people who live in that land now have any right to those things.
Since you go on to talk about Egypt, I think you should consider that when the modern day “grave robbers” (aka, archaeologists) found many of these tombs they had already been looted (some numerous times) by the locals. Westerners were simply following in the footsteps of those who lived in the area.
This has little to do with anything. We are not talking about digging up Sadat’s body. We are talking about mummies that are thousands of years old.
Not extreme but not really relevant, either. If we are talking about the pyramids, as discussed above these have been looted by Egyptians for thousands of years before any Westerner came along.
Please tell me how any mummies, statues from ancient Rome and Greece, etc. are sacred.
If this is the case then we should perhaps consider that. However, for items like the Elgin marbles this certainly does not apply.
I don’t think anyone would be too offended by consecrated hosts or Mormon underwear being displayed. And Muslim countries do put parts of saints’ bodies in their museums. While in Istanbul I saw what was purportedly the arm and skull of John the Evangelist in a museum. I was certainly not offended by this.
If the locals had been jumping off of cliffs, should the westerners have done that too?
And while we have archeologists today, some of the people who brought artifacts back were definitely grave robbers. Some of the Egyptian artifacts in the British Museum were brought back by a man whose previous career was carnival strongman. He cared nothing about history or knowledge and was just after wealth and prestige. After another grave robber stole a bunch of artifacts he’d dug up, the strongman took the precaution of carving his name into an alabaster sarcophagus. He had no moral difficulty defacing and damaging an artifact to ensure his own prestige. The British Museum still has the sarcophagus on prominent display and you can clearly see the man’s signature.
Aren’t they still human remains? Why does a few millenia change that? Exactly how long does somebody have to be dead before it is acceptable to exhibit them to the public?
They did it first, so it’s not wrong anymore?
Judaism teaches that any human remains must be treated with respect.
Catholics might. The doctrine of transubstantiation holds that once consecrated by an ordained priest the eucharist becomes the actual body of Christ despite retaining the outward appearance of bread. As the actual flesh of the son of God, there are many rules on how it can be handled.
Re Grave Robbing
Since my first trip to the Smithsonian, I’ve held that the public display of mummies is wrong. It is a violation of privacy, and insult to the deceased. I do realize that leaving the mummies in their tombs would alkmost certainly result in looters taking them and selling them in whole or in parts to private collectors, or people who want mummy dust for potions and quack medicines. Obviously, museums are the better option. The mummy and the objects found with it will be studied and learned from, where looters would destroy knowledge in order to make their profit. I still think that there is a better way. What about study of human remains for a few years, and then reburial along with reproductions of the objects found with the corpse? Secret reburial at an undisclosed location would prevent looters from digging the corpse up. Burying the corpse with reproductions of objects would allow museums to exhibit the originals, prevent looters from digging up the corpse for artifacts, and respect the beliefs of the deceased.