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Repatriation Of Relics & Antiquities: News & Specific Cases

US prosecutors are seeking to confiscate a rare ancient tablet from a Christian museum co-founded by the president of retailer Hobby Lobby.

The 3,500-year-old artefact, from what is now Iraq, bears text from the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world's oldest works of literature.

Prosecutors allege that an unnamed auction house deliberately withheld information about its origins.

Hobby Lobby said it was co-operating with government investigations.

It bought the tablet from the auction house in a private sale in 2014 for $1.67m (£1.36m) for display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington.

The office of the US attorney for the Eastern District of New York says the tablet was illegally imported into the US.


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52692846
update.

"A federal court has ordered that a rare ancient artefact, known as the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, must be surrendered to authorities.


The 3,500-year-old tablet, from what is now Iraq, bears text from the Epic of Gilgamesh - one of the world's oldest works of literature.

Officials say it was illegally imported before being purchased by the Christian-owned brand Hobby Lobby.

The rare item was bought to be put on display at the Museum of the Bible.

The Washington DC museum, chaired and funded by the Hobby Lobby's president Steve Green, has been plagued by controversies involving its collection.

Officials said the tablet was purchased by a US antiquities dealer in 2003 in London, who then shipped it to the US without declaring the contents and sold it on with false documentation."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57992957
 
Trafficked artefacts to be returned to India. The alleged smuggler has been charged.

The National Gallery of Australia is to return 14 works of art to India that are suspected of having been stolen, looted or exported illegally.

The religious and cultural artefacts include sculptures, photos and a scroll and are worth around $2.2m (£1.57m). Gallery director Nick Mitzevich said their return would close "a very difficult chapter of our history".

All but one of the works are connected to Subhash Kapoor, a former New York art dealer and alleged trafficker.
Kapoor, who is awaiting trial in India, denies all charges.

Some of the disputed pieces date back to the 12th Century, when the Chola dynasty presided over a flourishing of Hindu art in Tamil Nadu.

The Canberra gallery has already returned several other works it acquired via Kapoor, including a bronze statue of the Hindu god Shiva it bought for $5m (£3.6m) in 2008.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-58027898
 
A 3,000+-year-old gold ring stolen during WW2 and ending up bequeathed to the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm has now been repatriated to Greece.
After string of adventures, ancient gold ring back in Greece

A more than 3,000-year-old gold signet ring that was stolen from an Aegean island in World War II, crossed the Atlantic, was bought by a Nobel Prize-winning Hungarian scientist and ended up in a Swedish museum has found its way back to Greece.

It was the latest in a series of coups by Greek authorities seeking the return of works plundered from the antiquities-rich country — even though an initial effort by the Swedish museum to return the ring apparently fell between the cracks of 1970s bureaucracy.

The Greek culture ministry said Friday that the gold Mycenaean-era work from Rhodes, decorated with two facing sphinxes, was willingly returned by Swedish officials who provided full assistance with documenting the artifact and its provenance.

Greek experts confirmed the identification, and the piece was handed over in Stockholm by Vidar Helgesen, executive director of the Nobel Foundation, to which the ring had been bequeathed by the Hungarian biophysicist. ...

The ring, which would have been a status symbol for a local nobleman in the 3rd millennium B.C., was discovered in 1927 by Italian archaeologists in a Mycenaean grave near the ancient city of Ialysos on Rhodes. The southeastern Aegean island belonged to Italy until it was incorporated in Greece after WWII.

The Ministry of Culture and Sports said the ring was stolen from a museum on Rhodes during the war — with hundreds of other pieces of jewelry and coins that remain missing — and surfaced in the United States.

It was bought to the U.S. during the 1950s or 1960s by Georg von Békésy, a biophysicist and art collector whose collection was donated to the Nobel Foundation after his 1972 death and from there distributed to several museums. ...
FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/politics-travel-greece-museums-5e81f76d35ee07822f1de383f86448c2
 
It would appear there's a major cluster of repatriation contentions surfacing, related to items of jewelry Howard Carter illegally took from the tomb of King Tut (Tutankhamun / Tutankhamen).
Long-lost jewelry from King Tut's tomb rediscovered a century later

Tutankhamun's tomb, discovered a century ago on Nov. 4, 1922, contained many fantastic artifacts. But some of the pharaoh's jewelry has gone missing in the century since it was discovered, despite laws specifying that the artifacts in the tomb belong to Egypt.

Some of this jewelry may have been taken out of Egypt by Howard Carter, the British archaeologist who led the excavation that uncovered the tomb. In research that will be presented at a conference in Luxor between Nov. 4 and 6, Marc Gabolde ... , an Egyptology professor at Paul-Valéry University of Montpellier in France, identified some of this lost jewelry and where it might be. He examined images that photographer Harry Burton snapped of finds from Tutankhamun's tomb in the 1920s and compared them to pieces found in museums and auction sites.

Gabolde's research allowed him to virtually reconstruct a broad collar that was on Tutankhamun's chest but is now in multiple pieces and locations, some of which are unknown. According to Gabolde, parts of the collar were taken by Carter and are in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, while some of the beads on the collar appear to have been restrung into a necklace that is now owned by anonymous owners who have tried, unsuccessfully, to sell them at auction — most recently, in 2015 at Christie's. Gabolde compared images of the collar taken by Burton to images from the museum and auction site and found that they appear to be the same. The Nelson-Atkins Museum agrees and has noted this on their website ...

Another example of lost jewelry from Tutankahmun's tomb that was taken by Carter consists of beads from a headdress. Gabolde found that the beads appear to have been restrung into a necklace that is now in the Saint Louis Art Museum. On their website the St Louis Art Museum acknowledges ... that this could be from the tomb.

Yet another example of restrung beads from Tut's tomb is a necklace that is now in the British Museum in London, Gabolde noted; The beads would also have been taken by Carter. Another piece of jewelry stolen from the tomb is a faience (glazed ceramic) broad collar that was in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York but was returned to Egypt in 2011. It had also been stolen by Carter. ...

Why Carter stole the artifacts is not certain. ...

Aidan Dodson ... , an Egyptology professor at the University of Bristol in the U.K., told Live Science that he doubted that financial gain was a motivation. It's likely that Carter saw some of the pieces as being of little significance and thought that he should be allowed to give them to friends ... In some cases, Carter may have brought them back to England for repair or analysis. He had "a rather 'free and easy' attitude consistent with someone who had started his career in the 1890s, when archaeological morals were rather different," Dodson told Live Science in an email. ...

Carter may have intended to repair or analyze some of the jewelry but died before he could complete his work, but regardless of his motivations, his actions were "illegal," Gabolde said. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/king-tutankhamun-long-lost-jewelry
 
Looted Elgin Marbles to return home.

An agreement to return the Parthenon Sculptures - better known in the UK as the Elgin Marbles - is at "an advanced stage", according to a Greek newspaper.

Ta Nea reports that British Museum chair George Osborne, the former chancellor, has been holding secret talks with the Greek prime minister.
Greece has called for the return of the iconic sculptures for decades.

The British Museum said it would "talk to anyone, including the Greek government" to find partnership.

The Parthenon Sculptures are arguably the most high-profile artworks in the increasingly contested debate about whether museums should return items to their countries of origin.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-63846449
 
Pope Puts Parthenon Parts On Return Journey

The Vatican and Greece have finalised a deal for the return of three sculpture fragments from the Parthenon that have been in the collection of the Vatican Museums for two centuries.

The Vatican has termed the return an ecumenical “donation” to the Orthodox Christian archbishop of Athens and all Greece, not necessarily a state-to-state transfer.

But it nevertheless puts pressure on the British Museum to conclude a deal with Greece over the fate of its much bigger collection of Parthenon sculptures.

https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/vatican-set-to-return-parthenon-fragments-to-greece-1443261.html
 
Looted Elgin Marbles to return home.

An agreement to return the Parthenon Sculptures - better known in the UK as the Elgin Marbles - is at "an advanced stage", according to a Greek newspaper.

Ta Nea reports that British Museum chair George Osborne, the former chancellor, has been holding secret talks with the Greek prime minister.
Greece has called for the return of the iconic sculptures for decades.

The British Museum said it would "talk to anyone, including the Greek government" to find partnership.

The Parthenon Sculptures are arguably the most high-profile artworks in the increasingly contested debate about whether museums should return items to their countries of origin.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-63846449

Looted is hardly a descriptive term, when Elgin saved the remaining marbles from being hacked off and ground down for cement by the indifferent locals or from further destruction by the various warring factions who cared nothing for priceless antiquities.
If Elgin hadn't saved what was left, there would probably be no marbles at all today.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/200...bles-why-restitution-is-not-always-the-answer
 
Looted is hardly a descriptive term, when Elgin saved the remaining marbles from being hacked off and ground down for cement by the indifferent locals or from further destruction by the various warring factions who cared nothing for priceless antiquities.
If Elgin hadn't saved what was left, there would probably be no marbles at all today.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/200...bles-why-restitution-is-not-always-the-answer
There is also no certainty that if they were returned, they would be cared for in the same manner.
 
Looted is hardly a descriptive term, when Elgin saved the remaining marbles from being hacked off and ground down for cement by the indifferent locals or from further destruction by the various warring factions who cared nothing for priceless antiquities.
If Elgin hadn't saved what was left, there would probably be no marbles at all today.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/200...bles-why-restitution-is-not-always-the-answer

You really don't have to make excuses for imperialist looters at this stage. If Elgin was temporarily saving the Marbles then he would have arranged to have them returned at a later, safer stage. Antiquities were looted in Iraq including from the National Museum in Baghdad during the war there. Those responsible are hunted down internationally, many are in prison. Elgin was in the same league as them.

The Marbles are stolen goods and should be returned.
 
[sarcasm]
Really it comes down to Johnny Foreigner not understanding the value of things and being too childlike and generally incompetent to be trusted with them. Maybe when they've matured as nations under our careful tutelage things could be reconsidered.
[/sarcasm]

I was brought up by classicists and this household has over 100 years of archaeological interest, experience and practice. This household is totally in favour of repatriating the marbles and in general favour of repatriation in this context.

It is a question of weighing the value of the items against the risk if they are lost - to humanity in general. Cash value isn't what I mean. Their beauty and presence can be reproduced 1:! these days. The archaeological/ historical data we have from them is as complete as we can make it (at the moment) - they are some of the most studied artifacts ever.

A new technique might come along. How likely does that have to be to outweigh the moral imperative?
 
[sarcasm]
Really it comes down to Johnny Foreigner not understanding the value of things and being too childlike and generally incompetent to be trusted with them. Maybe when they've matured as nations under our careful tutelage things could be reconsidered.
[/sarcasm]
Well... look at what happened when they had a regime change amid mass rioting in various Middle Eastern countries some years ago.
So much stuff in Egypt was stolen or damaged. Similar happened in Iraq.
And then there was the irreversible damage to the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan.
 
[sarcasm]
Really it comes down to Johnny Foreigner not understanding the value of things and being too childlike and generally incompetent to be trusted with them. Maybe when they've matured as nations under our careful tutelage things could be reconsidered.
[/sarcasm]

I was brought up by classicists and this household has over 100 years of archaeological interest, experience and practice. This household is totally in favour of repatriating the marbles and in general favour of repatriation in this context.

It is a question of weighing the value of the items against the risk if they are lost - to humanity in general. Cash value isn't what I mean. Their beauty and presence can be reproduced 1:! these days. The archaeological/ historical data we have from them is as complete as we can make it (at the moment) - they are some of the most studied artifacts ever.

A new technique might come along. How likely does that have to be to outweigh the moral imperative?

Doesn't have to be what you call "Johnny Foreigner".
Boorish ignorance knows no nationality. Centuries ago English peasants smashed bits off Stonehenge and Avebury to build their shacks.
 
You really don't have to make excuses for imperialist looters at this stage. If Elgin was temporarily saving the Marbles then he would have arranged to have them returned at a later, safer stage. Antiquities were looted in Iraq including from the National Museum in Baghdad during the war there. Those responsible are hunted down internationally, many are in prison. Elgin was in the same league as them.

The Marbles are stolen goods and should be returned.

Now that Greece has moved on from its dark ages and can guarantee to safeguard such treasures, it absolutely does make sense to take them back to their country of origin.
But surely the point is thank goodness for Lord Elgin managing to save what was left of the marbles?
If it weren't for the guy that you misrepresent as a "looter" saving these ancient artefacts from assorted local vandals and insouciant warring factions, there would be no marbles to return!
 
Well... look at what happened when they had a regime change amid mass rioting in various Middle Eastern countries some years ago.
So much stuff in Egypt was stolen or damaged. Similar happened in Iraq.
And then there was the irreversible damage to the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan.

All of which is awful.

Look at the balance of value I propose?
 
Now that Greece has moved on from its dark ages and can guarantee to safeguard such treasures, it absolutely does make sense to take them back to their country of origin.
But surely the point is thank goodness for Lord Elgin managing to save what was left of the marbles?
If it weren't for the guy that you misrepresent as a "looter" saving these ancient artefacts from assorted local vandals and insouciant warring factions, there would be no marbles to return!

But did he save them? Or was that a myth created to justify the looting by this Highlands Hijacking Hoodlum? British Buccaneer Barons have been romanticised just like Pirates.
 
Elgin was granted a firman (letter of instruction) granting him permission to take away the pieces... ... “as a personal gesture after he encouraged the British forces in their fight to drive the French out of Egypt, which was then an Ottoman possession”
The marbles were taken from Greece to Malta, then a British protectorate, where they remained for a number of years until they were transported to Britain. The excavation and removal was completed in 1812 at a personal cost to Elgin of £74,240 (equivalent to £4,700,000 in 2019 pounds).
The final shipment of the Elgin Marbles reached London in 1812, and in 1816 the entire collection was acquired from Elgin by the crown for the sum of £35,000, about half of Elgin's costs.
 
But did he save them?
Oh that is certain.
Elgin appreciated the importance of ancient artefacts and it is undeniable that the marbles have been painstakingly preserved in the British Museum.
Had they not been saved, they would probably have been ground into cement or destroyed by warring factions.
 
All of which is awful.

Look at the balance of value I propose?
You're looking at their value as 'historical data', but I would say they are the history themselves.
You can't simply reproduce these items and point to them, saying 'these are the Elgin Marbles'. If that was the case, what's stopping the Greek government from making perfect copies and then declaring them to be the original 'Elgin Marbles'?
 
You're looking at their value as 'historical data', but I would say they are the history themselves.
You can't simply reproduce these items and point to them, saying 'these are the Elgin Marbles'. If that was the case, what's stopping the Greek government from making perfect copies and then declaring them to be the original 'Elgin Marbles'?

And it is precisely that point which makes the case for the originals, the original relics if you will, being with the Greeks.

Everything else can be shared - it is shared.

The magic of them belongs to the greeks.
 
Oh that is certa
Elgin appreciated the importance of ancient artefacts and it is undeniable that the marbles have been painstakingly preserved in the British Museum.
Had they not been saved, they would probably have been ground into cement or destroyed by warring factions.

His permission to remove the Marbles was given by a local Ottoman official who was likely bribed. The equivalent of a Nazi official giving permission for objets d'art to be exported from Occupied France.
 
But saying `stolen` is an oversimplification.

And yes, its been an issue for as long as that; Byron wrote a poem, I believe.

And giving them back, while good, is not an excuse to empty the BM.
 
And it is precisely that point which makes the case for the originals, the original relics if you will, being with the Greeks.

Everything else can be shared - it is shared.

The magic of them belongs to the greeks.
But only if they promise to look after them!
 
What about things like Mark Aurel Steins collection, which as he stated, the so say rightful owners didnt care for and didnt much mind him having?

Or, heck, private collections, which may not be accessed by scholars? (As most museums should be but some I have dealt with are pernickerty...)
 
as they are doing :) I don't think our positions are so far apart?
Well... I am still in two minds about it.
Once all our museums have given everything away, they will have to close down.
Rather a lot of people depend on tourism for a living... including archaeologists.
 
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