I’m conflicted with this one.
If we return it to a country of origin that has no protections for priceless artefacts, we lose an irreplaceable part of our heritage as humans if the piece is lost/sold/stolen or worse destroyed. Granted it may be that country’s right to decide what it does with its history, but its unfair to the rest of us when we lose our shared history because of incompetence.
Like the Buddha statues that were destroyed by the Taliban,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan
As impractical as it would have been, I would much have preferred they were excavated and shipped to a safe museum or city somewhere, than being destroyed by ideological bigots. We lost an important piece of history, architecture and craftsmanship that day.
The Buddhas of Bamiyan are the extreme case, where the local rulers destroyed cultural heritage. There are also some items that can not reasonably been repatriated. But there are hundereds of items from Greece, Turkey, Egypt or reltively stable former colonies in museums in Western Europe. And then even famous institutions like the British museum manage to loose precious items.
Both Greece and Egypt have excellent museums, quite good enough to display and protect the objects and human remains liberated from their countries
This kind of loses sight of the whole part of why these artefacts are actually important: their situ. In-situ (in the original location it was found in the position and orientation it was in when found) can tell us everything from its purpose, the culture of origin, etc. But outside of situ many of these artefacts become useless.
Yes, these objects being in unstable countries can mean much risk to those objects. This instability is often directly caused by the policies of the more politically powerful countries, though. For instance, the Afghanistan example you give is arguably directly due to Ally foreign policy destabilizing the region for our own self interest.
Rather than accepting the current political climate’s default stance of leaving the middle east a wartorn region in the world - and having to choose between either leaving artefacts to potentially be destroyed or destroying the situ of the artefacts and robbing the native descendants of their ancestral objects - we should probably instead push for foreign policy which lifts unstable regions into developed States where they are better able to preserve their heritage.
That’s a really nice thought and I agree, but it doesn’t answer any of the practical questions the current of many countries often poses. Imo a, maybe temporary, solution that protects these artifacts is necessary.
Sadly FP will not change for these kinds of reasons, which is not saying we shouldn’t push for it nevertheless. In the meantime I fear not much good will come from an idealistic stance but rather practical solutions that at least preserve the hope we can at some point in time marvel at artifacts in their proper context. Just my opinion though
The reality is those graves and artifacts were being hunted and sacked for thousands of years for all kinds of purposes (mostly steal whatever they could, to melt the gold and sell the gems) as soon they stopped being actively guarded or cared for, or their religious value diminished along with the religion that they were made for.
More than that, surrounding people kept on repurposing materials from the temples to build other structures.
Every new empire that took over their land would plunder whatever value they could find to fund their army and enrich themselves.
This long term view of history of artifacts of old empires as something to be preserved at all costs, let alone in their country of origin is rather new - hell, the idea of a nation state is rather new.
Where are the ancient museums that were preserving artifacts of older civilisations?
Now, should they be given back close to their place of origin and historical context? My modern sensibilities say absolutely.
But I can hardly call the people that took them for the sake of inflating their social standing and preserving them in the process of displaying them in their collections special kind of assholes than anyone that came before them that wanted only to melt them down for cash - it was an improvement if only because were not as desperate as the people before them.
It’s not always the foreigner who stealing it tho. Sometimes it’s the natives (thieves) who stealing the artifacts to sell, even as souvenirs on the street.
Egyptian thieves even sell mummy as souvenirs.
If the country of origin was once under the control of Great Britain… close enough…
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…“swine”?
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As a chilean, I must say, return the moai, or else face delicious recipes on your feed.
Because we were stronger
The Met has a mixed record. It’s famous Temple was rescued with coordination from Egypt from flooding at the creation of the Anwar Dam.
Mangalors: because war is coming
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Don’t bring this up with British people. They have brainrot from decades and decades of conservative propaganda, even if they are otherwise left-leaning, and will often result in the stupidest arguments just because they haven’t bothered to spend 5 minutes to think about them.
Or, you know, they just agree that the artifacts should just be returned.
Generalising across a while group, let alone a nationality, is just plain dumb
Fair enough. It’s just incredibly disheartening to find how certain kinds of chauvinistic attitudes that belong in the 19th century are so widespread even amongst people I expected would know better.
I’m British, visited an anthropology museum last week and left feeling angry. Give it all back.
Unnecessarily insulting and broad statement there.
To see other cultures? What use would it have in the country where hundreds more of it are around?
With consent, I’d agree with this take. If it has never been asked about, there’s always today. Who to ask? Well… Let’s let these expensive museum administrators earn their keep.
If there was an artifact that was meant to go to a museum id rather have it go to one where the most people can see and enjoy a piece of my areas history rather than set it up in a case in a third world country shack
Also you probably wouldn’t want to leave stuff in a museum in Ukraine where ruzzians are trying to commit genocide…a Gaza where the Israeli government is trying to do the same with the help of us in the USA…not me particularly or anyone I know, it’s the fucking government making a huge mistake and ever so slowly correcting itself as popular opinion differs from it… I said enough.
