# You may retrieve a lost historical artifact. What do you chose?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [November 21, 2008, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879 "2008-11-21T18:25:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2008, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/41 "2008-11-21T21:17:58Z")
The papers of Sir Richard Francis Burton, which are among the long list of valuables foolishly destroyed by the small-minded heirs of great men.
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### Author:  [@Spiny\_Norman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiny_Norman)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2008, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/42 "2008-11-21T21:45:18Z")
Seems like tha major angles are covered, so I’d go local and retrieve [The Golden Horns of Gallehus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_horns_of_Gallehus) before that jackass Heidenreich stole them and melted them down.
Not only would I save two very cool 5th century artifacts from destruction, I might spare untold generations of Danish schoolchildren from having to listen to and interpret Oehlenschlager’s frankly \*interminable \*poem on the subject of their discovery and loss. Golden age of poetry, I think not.
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### Author:  [@Khampelf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khampelf)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2008, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/43 "2008-11-21T22:01:21Z")
Maltese Falcon?
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### Author:  [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2008, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/44 "2008-11-21T22:02:57Z")
> [@Agent\_Foxtrot](#):
>
> A copy of the Bible, pre-King James.
Those aren’t lost. I worked with many of them when I was writing my aforementioned dissertation. The oldest one was a Wycliffite Bible from c.1450 or so.
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### Author:  [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tastes_of_Chocolate)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2008, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/45 "2008-11-21T22:12:45Z")
1937 - Fox Pictures film vault
If I take them off the reel, I wonder how many films I could save. Films that were destroyed in a fire in 1937, with no copies left.
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### Author:  [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2008, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/46 "2008-11-21T23:15:18Z")
What a great thread topic.
Can I grab Shakespeare’s works? Or would then the world never learn of him until I showed them to the world?
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### Author:  [@Creaky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Creaky)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2008, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/47 "2008-11-21T23:16:02Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#):
>
> Don’t bother. I bought two sets at an antique show and they cracked in the dishwasher after the first use. Utter crap.
First, you should never put really old china in the dishwasher! 😃
Second, I’m obviously not going to the right antique shows. 😛
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### Author:  [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2008, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/48 "2008-11-22T01:00:10Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#):
>
> The trips thru time aren’t part of a villainy plan, librarian; they’re part of a I-love-my-family-so-am-being-less-evil refrigerium. I mean, seriously, why would _I_ want Stalin too die in '17?
Crimoney, you’re in real danger of being brought down by the Wonder Twins or Scrappy Doo. What you are attributing to the real Stalin and Beria was the work of my replicants. The originals were no more than small time thugs. You need to start thinking more about actual villainy and less about how you look in your little villain outfits.
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### Author:  [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2008, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/49 "2008-11-22T01:21:32Z")
The quarto edition of _Love’s Labour’s Won_, a.k.a. Shakespeare’s lost play. We know that it was being sold at a bookseller’s stall in 1603, but no copies survive; I assume that this creates no paradoxes.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2008, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/50 "2008-11-22T01:49:03Z")
Fermat’s _other_ notebook - the one with the wider margins.
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### Author:  [@lizardling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lizardling)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2008, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/51 "2008-11-22T01:53:50Z")
A lot of the good ones have already been taken (camera and photographing the contents of the Library of Alexandria – but I want to know, after which sacking would you jump to? Wikipedia cites 3-4 sackings), so… um.
The Antikythera Mechanism, right after the boat sank? I’ve been fascinated by it for a long time, and I’d love to see what it _really_ looked like back then, instead of the reconstructions that various people have done.
Ooh. I know. I’d probably dig up and take pictures of every paper from Archimedes that I could find. He had only about seven treatises that survived, and the rest we know only because other people referred to them in their own work. I’ve always wondered wtf that Roman soldier was thinking… :smack:
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### Author:  [@lynxie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lynxie)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2008, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/52 "2008-11-22T05:57:49Z")
The missing episodes of Doctor Who - as many as i can stuff in the backpack.
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### Author:  [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2008, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/53 "2008-11-22T06:41:30Z")
The tape with the 18 and a half minute gap on it before it was “accidentally” erased. I am really, really curious as to what was on that tape.
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### Author:  [@JHE1967](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JHE1967)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2008, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/54 "2008-11-22T07:26:41Z")
Syd Barrett’s early 1967 solo demo tape he did for producer Joe Boyd. The tape contained original Syd songs he thought were unsuitable for Pink Floyd. The idea was Boyd would shop the songs to other artists to record. Boyd subsequently lost what as thought to be the only copy of the tape.
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### Author:  [@phil417](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phil417)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2008, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/55 "2008-11-22T08:02:05Z")
I would travel back to either of two historical eras: (1) travel back to 1777. According to history, after the Declaration of Independence was signed, copies were sent out to each of the 13 colonies for ratification. What if one of those ratified copies sent back went missing (into the historical backpack)?
(2) I’ve always heard that the Beatles played in Hamburg, Germany in 1960, and that amateur audiotapes were made just before George Harrison (soon followed by the other Beatles) was deported. I’d stuff a copy (or the original) into that backpack.
Love, Phil
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### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2008, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/56 "2008-11-22T08:49:51Z")
The original Ten Commandments tablets, if they actually existed.
Or Antoni Gaudi’s blueprints for Sagrada Familia, which were destroyed during the Spanish Civil War.
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### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2008, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/57 "2008-11-22T09:16:51Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#):
>
> …whatever you choose must be able to fit in [this](http://www.altrec.com/the-north-face/canvas-laptop-backpack/)
> [@Antinor01](#):
>
> Keeping with the book theme, I’d be tempted to go back to the library of Alexandria and stuff the backpack with as much as possible.
Hmmph. I was thinking "bring back the (entire) library of Alexandria, until **Skald** restricted me on size!
OK… can I shadow that Wm Shakespeare fellow over the course of many years and snag a copy of anything he writes that we don’t seem to have a copy of?
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### Author:  [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2008, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/58 "2008-11-22T10:02:41Z")
Stupid size restrictions! My first choice would have been the Library at Alexandria. But I guess I could stuff maybe ten of the most important tomes from there.
All of Tesla’s secret papers that the government took upon his death.
Whatever original Egyptian document Plato based his Atlantis legend on.
A bunch of the Mayan/Aztec codices that the Spanish destroyed.
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### Author:  [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2008, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/59 "2008-11-22T13:02:10Z")
[QUOTE=The Second Stone]
I’ll go with the head of Socrates after he commits suicide. Remove the flesh and **have his skull sit on my coffee table. That will shut him up and I’ll win all the arguments.**
[/QUOTE]
I just adore this one. My kind of op.
Anyway…for me, the [“Tsetse” Primary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W44) from the [B-43 nuclear weapon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B43_nuclear_bomb) lost in deep ocean in an accident with an A-4 Skyhawk from the USS _Ticonderoga_ in December, 1965.
What I do with it after that is my business.
Burn, baby…_burn_…
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### Author:  [@Zabali\_Clawbane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zabali_Clawbane)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2008, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-may-retrieve-a-lost-historical-artifact-what-do-you-chose/473879/60 "2008-11-22T15:10:37Z")
As much of Da Vinci’s diaries and journals etc. as possible. Alternate: My maternal grandfather’s paternal grandmother’s birth certificate, (my great-great grandmother on my mother’s paternal side) and other tribal documentation papers.
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