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Comment by Teever | Hacker News Reader

That's a good question.

Another good question is "Should the nation of Greece and the Greek people be allowed to profit off of pictures that the British Museum has taken of objects that are only in the British Museum because they were pillaged by British soldiers?"

It seems really bad that a nation can invade many other nations and pillage their cultural pieces to squirrel them away in a museum and then dictate to the citizens of those nations what they can or can't do with pictures of the artifacts.

The notion that the British Museum can tell Egyptian citizen what they can or can't do with photographs of the Rosetta Stone is pretty odious.

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I agree with the sentiment, but at a more abstract level it is almost as shaky that an Egyptian citizen today is entitled to art from the pharaonic times more than a British citizen today.

Nothing shaky about it since the Egyptian citizens would be the ones who would have those artworks today had the brits not come round to express their ancient tradition of thieving

It's the classic problem. I think when I am much older I will commit a lot of crime to benefit my great grandchildren. Time will ease their culpability and they can use arguments like the above.

Right of conquest is often how kings get a kingdom or expand it.

And was criminalised after world war 2, so its proceeds from a historical crime.

By that standard so is the whole of America. There's a line to draw somewhere.

How convenient for America

To be a snarky: that was a cartel that benefited from the deed in the past outlawing its competition.

This conclusion assumes many things that are not a given, such as the assumptions that it would have been not have been lost, damaged, or stolen by a third party during all of that time.

Indeed, 'ownership' of ancient things is never so simple.

The stone was carved ~196 BC (Hellenistic period)

Circa 1470 AD the stone was taken (probably from the town of Sais) by slaves of Egyptian/Syrian Sultan Quaitbay for use as raw building material for a military Fort (Fort Jullien aka Fort of Qaitbey)

The French discovered it during Napoleon's Egypt/Syria campeign in 1799 AD

The British defeated the French and took the stone to London under the Capitulation of Alexandria in 1801 AD

> The Rosetta Stone is a fragment of a larger stele. No additional fragments were found in later searches of the Rosetta site. Owing to its damaged state, none of the three texts is absolutely complete. The top register, composed of Egyptian hieroglyphs, suffered the most damage. Only the last 14 lines of the hieroglyphic text can be seen; all of them are broken on the right side, and 12 of them on the left. wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone

So because it is possible someone else may have come along and stolen it, that is a justification for the Brits to steal (and keep) it?

The point is that Britain has those artifacts now and Greece/Egypt/other countries want them back now.

>So because it is possible someone else may have come along and stolen it, that is a justification for the Brits to steal (and keep) it?

Please do not pollute the conversation with strawmen. There are more options here than the two extremes. Take a look at the comment to which I was responding:

>...the Egyptian citizens would be the ones who would have those artworks today had the brits not come round to express their ancient tradition of thieving

And take another look at my actual comment:

>This conclusion assumes many things that are not a given, such as the assumptions that it would have been not have been lost, damaged, or stolen by a third party during all of that time.

The comment to which I was responding presented an absurd and presumptive claim. Absurd claims should be called out for what they are, regardless of which 'side' you perceive to be strengthened or weakened by doing so.

It was only stolen 100-200 years ago. It had survived for 2000-4000 years... I'm not sure your argument holds weight.

If you read the link to the article about the Elgin marbles I posted in response to the original Brit-bashing comment that launched this thread, you'll see it does; at least in the sense that speaking authoritatively of rights and wrongs - as though the case is proven - is unwise.

I appreciate the form of your comment: A factual claim followed by a statement of uncertainty.

My argument is that the comment to which I was responding was a non sequitur premised on a number of unstated assumptions. I threw in a few examples to invite the reader to think laterally, to investigate. You question my argument, so I wonder: Have you done so? Have you put the thought in to examine the claim made, and to see what other assumptions are being hidden?

Regarding the facts you emphasize, I don't agree that "only" is a good modifier to place before "100-200 years" in this context. The 2000-4000 years you mention is entirely irrelevant, given survivorship bias.

It's not 'just' ancient artefacts.

There are also indigenous australian remains and artefacts stolen and refused to be returned.

Stolen up into the mid 20th century.

For readers after a more nuanced view with context:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2017/03-...

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