Indiana Jones Wasn't the Only Tomb-Raiding Thief
It's part of the reassurance required in a world where stolen artifacts (or dinosaurs) can be everywhere. You don't want to pay $20 million for T.rex Jr. only to have the authorities sweep in and confiscate it.
No one's immune. A former neighbor of mine in New York — a prominent antiquities dealer — went to jail for several months for collaborating with a British smuggler of Egyptian antiquities who saw himself as a kind of James Bond character (he liked to sign off on paperwork with "003" or "006-½" ). According to reports, the smuggler used paint to make a 3,300-year-old statue (estimated to be worth $1.2 million) look like a cheap souvenir to get it out of Egypt. Not-quite-007 was convicted. The statue was returned to the country.
In her recent London Review of Books piece on the stolen antiquities trade, Azadeh Moaveni describes the expensive discomfiture of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the 2018 gala of its Costume Institute, a gold-sheathed Kim Kardashian posed next to the equally glittery coffin of an Egyptian priest named Nedjemankh. As Moaveni put it, the "'who wore it best' picture... ricocheted around the internet" — and caught the attention of a unit of the Manhattan district attorney's office that keeps an eye out for suspect antiquities. Looters had unearthed the golden coffin during the chaos of the Arab Spring, unceremoniously tossed the priest's mummy and, through shadowy routes and a French dealer, got it to the Met, which reportedly paid $3.7 million for it. Reviewing the coffin's provenance, the museum admitted the paperwork had been falsified and repatriated its evanescent treasure to Egypt.
Then there are the objects that some museums have held on to for decades, if not longer. They don't want to part with them — and since possession is nine-tenths of the law, it's hard for the countries of origin to pry them away.(1) My colleague Matthew Brooker recently went over the rationale of the British Museum for being the proper custodian of the Parthenon Marbles and other items hauled back by soldiers and adventurers — the prototypes of Indiana Jones — during Britain's expansionist age: "'Universal' museums that hold encyclopedic collections from across the world enable the study and comparison of cultures in one place, making them available to the widest number of visitors. Some priceless antiquities wouldn't be safe if returned to their countries of origin, the script sometimes runs."
However, as Matthew points out, the case against repatriation wasn't helped when news broke of the theft and illegal sale of items from the British Museum's collection. The National Palace Museum in Taipei — home to the much of the imperial art collections of China's Ming and Qing dynasties — also came in for harsh criticism from the mainland when it was reported in October 2022 that three pieces of antique porcelain worth $66 million were damaged. At the end of 1948 and the beginning of 1949, the museum's collection was shipped to the island when the Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek faced defeat by Mao Zedong's communists. Beijing is demanding the return of the treasures — which are a significant part of China's cultural patrimony. The National Palace Museum argues that it is the custodian of artifacts that now belong to "people around the world."
The argument about being well-funded custodians (and thus better than museums in developing countries) will ring hollow for Egyptian antiquities once the long-delayed Grand Egyptian Museum finally opens. It will be the largest museum in the world. Once it's up and running, expect renewed calls for the return of the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum and the bust of Nefertiti from Berlin.
Repatriation isn't the only option. Restitution — as in recompense — may be another. There are lessons to be learned from the Monastic Republic of Mount Athos, an autonomous region in northern Greece, a two-hour drive from Thessaloniki. When I visited last week, the monks at the monastery of Vatopedi told me that the building that houses many of its treasures, vestments and reliquaries was paid for by the government of Catalonia in Spain. Back in the 1990s, the monks — whose collective memory goes back centuries — booted out a visiting Catalan singer because of the destructive occupation of Mount Athos by Catalan pirates — in the early 14th century! The singer's friend happened to be head of the Catalonian government — and the decision was made to give Vatopedi nearly $275,000 in war damages, 700 years after the fact. Now, all is forgiven.
(1) The UK also has heritage laws that prevent public museums from giving away the contents of their collections, though there is some effort by a few directors of these institutions to change the rules to allow for more leeway in returning looted goods.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Howard Chua-Eoan is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion covering culture and business. He previously served as Bloomberg Opinion's international editor and is a former news director at Time magazine.
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