Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq
npr.org
npr.org
The burning of the Library of Alexandria is a potent symbol in Western culture, but the world has repeatedly suffered massive losses of cultural and historical artifacts in the last few decades. The public quickly develops historical amnesia for recent events. Compare, for example, the loss of Brazil's National Museum to a fire two years ago.[2]
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/ir...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/fire-engulfs-b...
edited: clarity and link formatting
2. Chemical warfare was used before the Romans, for instance, like that condiment, the greeks had it before them. (Though I don't believe the greeks invented it first either). For example, see this wikipedia article (which is really in need of some improvement) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_chemical_warfare
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilisation#Clim...
The pattern of civilization, destruction, new civilization is a repeating motif in history. Yes the Mongols caused a lot of destruction, but they also facilitated the East-West exchange of ideas and goods on a hithero unknown scale.
That’s an interesting way of saying they were pirates and slavers who raided Europe and abducted slaves for centuries.
Now 200 years later the US Navy is a pretty powerful fighting force.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza#Casing_s...
This is a very misleading distortion of history. The limestone casing on the Great Pyramid was destroyed in an earthquake in 1308 CE. The limestone rubble was pulled from the base of the pyramid and repurposed for building though much of it was also burned in kilns for lime like the marble of many ancient buildings and temples from the ancient world all around the Mediterranean by people of many and various religions and nationalities.
>When the Arab armies conquered North Africa, it was one of the richest and most developed areas in the Mediterranean. After the Arab conquest, it became a backwater and never achieved the prominence it had before.
You really ought to read up on the Islamic Golden Age.
These cities were conquered. Some were sacked and destroyed. There was major loss of life, economic destruction, and loss of property, including written works. The conquerors, at the time, did not much appreciate the value of what they were destroying.
The fact that the region later somewhat recovered does not take away from the fact that, if we’re talking about setbacks for human progress, the early Muslim conquests were one. Yes, there was a great reawakening where the conquerors began to appreciate the legacy that remained, and began translating and building on the works that escaped their destruction. That doesn’t make the intervening period better. And certainly the poster is correct that cities like Alexandria and Carthage never again achieved their old prominence.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests
As for your claims about Alexandria:
> Following the Arab conquest of Egypt in AD 641, the city was plundered and lost its significance before re-emerging in the modern era
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria
Once can also hardly read accounts of the conquest of Alexandria and think “my, what an improvement.” A lot of people died. Parts of the city burned. You are also wrong that the schools were closed prior. That was certainly not the case. Alexandria was a major center of learning up until the conquest.
Carthage was sacked and deliberately destroyed to prevent it from being retaken.
Look, yes, there’s a group of people out there that understates they Islamic Golden Age. But that doesn’t take away from the reality that the early Muslim conquests were absolutely ruinous. People were still writing those “important classical texts” you mention when they were killed and their texts burned. I doubt they would have much appreciated that the conquerors much later translated what survived the flames.
What your classics academia instruction seems to have short changed you is in the entire period of history where arab conquest reduced most mesopotamian and north african development to rubble, mostly in the name of religion.
Happily since I was a philosophy undergrad, I am easily able to spot a straw man. The claim was that the Arab Conquest transformed N Africa from a wealthy region to a backwater. This is was really what I was more responding to. During the Arab Golden Age N. Africa was far more prosperous than during the collapse of late Western Rome. If you learned about the history of the region you could discover how inaccurate the premise is as well as the conclusion. Anyway, this conversation ended yesterday so research if you'd like to learn, but I'm out.
> These cities were conquered. Some were sacked and destroyed. There was major loss of life, economic destruction, and loss of property, including written works. The conquerors, at the time, did not much appreciate the value of what they were destroying.
It's just life. North Africa was just a bunch of tribes/cities. It is easier for an invader to tackle them one city at a time than taking a full united civilization.
At the time of the expansion of Islam, there was no longer even a Western Roman Empire.
Later in one of the most dashing military campaigns, the Eastern Roman Empire(Byzantines) forces under Belisarius captured most of the territory of the former Western Roman Empire, including the African provinces after defeating Vandals. The African provinces were then organized into the Exarchate, which is what Muslim armies eventually overcame in the 690s AD.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda#Decline_and_destructio...
Edit - As I can't reply to stuff like this (it deserved to die) but in case I get anything more like it:
> Find me an "empire" that wasn't destructive. You're disingenuous, and likely racist as all hell. Fuck off.
I'm making that exact point, all empires are destructive, hence the it's not exceptional in either sense. Thanks to all those who can read and all those who don't go around calling others racists for no good reason.
There was definitely a period when western Europe was very backwards whereas a lot of meaningful and important progress was made in Muslim countries. There have been Islamic empires that were relatively tolerant about differences, and certainly didn't destroy everything they deemed heretic.
We have a strong tendency to generalise: everything that's a bit distant from us has to be either one thing of the other thing. We're terrible at nuance, yet it's vital in order to understand history.
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/878061.Moorish_Spain
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/336859.The_Golden_Trade_...
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4398835-the-berbers-and-...
A more important factor in their quick spread was the violent conquest of a huge swathe of the Middle East, North Africa, and part of Western Europe.
Because the region had been extremely wealthy and advanced for centuries, with plenty of intra-Empire cultural exchange, itdid eventually recover. Most (not all) of the “advances” were translations of and commentaries on Greek/Roman and Persian works, and notably, most of them were from the pre-existing conquered strata population in pre-existing centers of learning. Of course, as time went on, people did build up higher, but the conquests were a major setback.
So let’s not hype it up too much - where would the world be, if, as Gibbon wrote, Mohammed had died in the cradle, and all those people hadn’t been killed, books burned, and cities sacked?
There’s no way to know - it might have been worse off in both cases.
I wonder, why did they get stuck into the past still being ruled either by a monarch or some religious leader?
But unfortunately, more than just knowledge was exchanged.
Imagine universities existing for hundreds of years, but promptly destroyed by invaders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda
This pattern repeated throughout India for hundreds of years.
I am confused... are you an ancient Roman?
I'm actually more of a cisalpine gaul than a roman myself, but the beauty of the empire was that it was multi cultural and multi racial.
Said that, Italians absolutely look like romans, this is a small example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdUPYm06gVc
Our language is also the closest to the type of Latin romans spoke during the empire (which itself evolved).
I do not understand why it's even controversial, you're making a dumb point.
Wrong. Modern Galician is the closest extant language to Latin, the next closest being Spanish.
Romans fought wars against Italians for centuries, who after being conquered were regarded as allies, then as citizens, but never as Romans. The French and Germans have just as much Roman in their blood as the Italians.
https://languagevolcano.wordpress.com/2016/07/08/which-langu...
I don't speak Galego well but Spanish FOR SURE is not as close as Italian because it contains so many Arabic influences.
Also, you're referring to "cives romani" and obviously a person that didn't live in the city of Rome wasn't a roman.
Regarding the having "roman blood" for French and Germans, you're just wrong. I'm not even going to bother finding you resources because it's not my job to educate you, but I suggest you inform yourself before you start spewing incorrect notions like they are somehow facts.
Funny how even though I'm fluent in Latin and can understand a third of spoken Spanish (having never studied Spanish), I can barely understand 10% of Italian regardless of the accent I'm listening to or which city the speaker is from. It's also funny that several other fluent Latin speakers (and some professors) I've talked to agree about this.
>Also, you're referring to "cives romani" and obviously a person that didn't live in the city of Rome wasn't a roman.
No, not obviously. Romans thought of themselves as a separate ethnicity with a distinct language, culture, and religion from Italians. They are descended from a distinct tribe that settled the city. A Roman family who had lived in Gaul for generations would still be called Roman. An Italian family who had lived in Roma would still be called Italians and cives Romani. Romans settled throughout their conquered territory, which included Italy, Hispania, Britannia, and Gaul. Like it or not, those regions have as much demonstrable Roman blood as modern day Italians whom are mostly descended from Italic tribes, not from Romans.
>it's not my job to educate you
Thank heavens my education of the Latin language and Roman history doesn't depend on you.
I hope that was a joke. It's very sad to see people take credit for achievements of others just on the grounds that they happen to share the same nationality/race/religion/birth place.
Sure, someone of your tribe achieved X in the past, very well done, but how did YOU contribute to that? Winning the lottery of birth is not an achievement.
Edit: Anyway I'm starting to believe that this whole submission/thread should be flagged. It certainly discusses many things besides the theft of the tablet.
Found Augustus Caesar's hn account.
(Though, obviously the Romans were far from the first to do this; evidence of some sort of sewerage apparatus goes back at least 6000 years, and the Minoans had an urban system long before Rome existed)
A lot of which came through Indian traders, first evidences of human surgeries are found in Indian subcontinent, Indus valley civilization had pretty advance irrigation system for the time and mathematics: quadratic equations, notion of zero, notion of limits and inifinty were here in philosophical sense even if no one every applied it in mathematics.
In the field of war strategy and material, like steel for sword - India was wayy ahead at its time. They knew about the steel temperament long before Europeans even started using steel for swords.
"During the 6th Century BCE, an Indian physician named Sushruta – widely regarded in India as the 'father of surgery' – wrote one of the world's earliest works on medicine and surgery"
Modern Bagdad https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y2BD66C-W58
I dont find any descriptions of specific surgeries here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_in_the_medieval_Isl...
Mud huts? Rome was composed of mud hut? The tallest building in the world for almost the entire 2nd millenia was in england. Not exactly "mud huts".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_St_Paul%27s_Cathedral
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Cathedral
https://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-tallest-buildin...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_world%27s_talle...
I think you are overselling the muslim world and underselling europe a bit.
> the Muslim world had plumbing, water filtration, surgery, advanced mathematics, and many more amazing scientific advances which quickly spread throughout Muslim countries due to the cultural exchange at Mecca.
Much of it brought to the muslim world by the roman empire and the greeks. Or from the indians/chinese/etc in the east. Of course there were muslim contributions but lets not get too carried away here.
> I wonder what the world could have been like if the Mongols had never destroyed so much civilization and progress.
The world would be exactly the way it was in the 1200s without the mongols. The muslim world had stagnated by the time the mongols came around. After all the arabic islamic golden age started in the 700s. The mongols destroy arabic islamic civilization but they helped create the turkic islamic civilization of the ottoman empire not to mention the persian centered khanates which went on to create mughal india. Without the mongols, we don't have the italian renaissance and modern europe and without modern europe we don't have modern civilization. The empire created by the mongols is why marco polo went east. It's also why christopher columbus set sail. Without the mongols, we don't have the new world.
No doubt, the arab world suffered and lost out, but the world advanced immensely due to the mongols. The mongol empire was the first truly "global" empire. It helped europe bypass the muslim world and trade directly with india, china, etc.
I'll take whig historiography for $500, Alex.
Also, blaming Mongols as if they were the sole destroyers is absolutely incorrect.
That said, here's a famous quote:
O would that my mother had never borne me, that I had died before and that I were forgotten [so] tremendous disaster such as had never happened before, and which struck all the world, though the Muslims above all . . . Dadjdjal [Muslim Anti-Christ] will at least spare those who adhere to him, and will only destroy his adversaries. These [Mongols], however, spared none. They killed women, men, children, ripped open the bodies of the pregnant and slaughtered the unborn. - Ibn al-Athir (1233–1160)
So much music and movies is available in inferior or compromised formats if you go through the versions available on the market today from the license owners.
I think LEGO Group is good about this; they have a vault containing a copy of every product they ever made.
If we think there is a value provided to visitors seeing them in person, then preserving them far away deprives the Iraqi from these benefits making the preservation neutral at best in the short/middle term (long term? will it ever come back ?). It might feel like having your pet living abroad in a shelter, on one side it gets to live, on the other it doesn’t help you much to cope with your life.
Or maybe because of an excess of pride in that cultural heritage, if you look at the big picture...
I'm talking about Nuremberg/Nürnberg, of course. I love living here now, but oh boy was the evil of an evil time concentrated here. It's hard to reconcile the lovely place I live now with what I grew up learning about it, to the extent that I think of it as Nürnberg today, but Nuremberg when considering the horrors of the 30s and 40s.
Big Western countries don't have constant, low-level instability like our former colonies - we have rare but all-encompassing blowouts. We've just been lucky in the US and Canada that geography protected us for so long (aside from the evil various European powers visited upon people we encountered or forcibly brought there).
More historically, think about spasmodic but intense episodes in the West, like the iconoclastism during the Protestant Reformation. Good luck to any ancient religious art that happened to be in Switzerland at the time... and think about the various flavors of religious nuttery in the US, now being concentrated and inflamed with social media. The Hobby Lobby founders fortunately wanted these artifacts as evidence for their flavor of religious nuttery, but what would have stopped them from acquiring artifacts that they felt needed to be destroyed?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_cultural_herita...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Mosul_Museum_ar...
I'm sure the citizens of Philly wouldn't be susceptible to any arguments that Baghdad would be a better place to store the Liberty Bell.
Art theft is a real issue in the US and Europe. If an art thief stole then sold a painting owned by an American to someone in China, would you support seeing the stolen property returned to the original owner? Would you take seriously the idea that the owner wasn't entitled to have their stolen property returned since there was a non-trivial chance the art could be stolen again?
It is a much different scenario if an artifact is destroyed either intentionally or unintentionally.
I'm not at all comfortable with the idea that Americans shouldn't return stolen antiquities because America might destabilize the region of the original owner again so badly it could be destroyed.
I'd forgotten to respond to this earlier but it's been bugging me, so I'd like to note that a significant amount stolen art is never recovered. In some cases prominent and expensive artworks have been destroyed by the thieves when they couldn't move the art in an attempt to destroy the evidence. Stolen art is sometimes destroyed either intentionally or unintentionally.
Who would want to return artifacts to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan just because the Taliban happened to control that piece of land at the time? Nobody cares about some little political group on the scale of 1000s of years.
Then the debate isn't so much about being lost, but whether the artefact should be located in the country where it was originally created, thousands of years ago.
And I think you can see it both ways. I don't understand people who identify themselves to the population that lived on the same territory centuries ago. It is a different people, a different culture, and there might be some trace of that culture left (like there are traces of the roman empire culture left all over europe), there might be some artefacts, some monuments left. But they are really a foreign people to the current inabitants. So should St Mark's Basilica in venice be destroyed to return the looted parts to Turkey? Or should the Lyxor obelisk on the place de la Concorde in Paris be returned to Egypt? I don't think so.
> > I am curious about what knowledge was lost in the fire,
> Probably next to nothing, and certainly nothing of importance was lost. Alexandria was hardly the only library in the world, and the libraries at Pergamum and later Rome herself rivaled Alexandria in scale. Antony replaced the losses of the fire during the Alexandrine War with copies made from the library at Pergamum, and libraries in gymnasia or simply founded for citizens abound during that period in the Greek world, they're in like literally every city of any size.
> We do not lose texts because of catastrophic events that wipe out all copies of them. We lose texts because they stop being copied.
Also check https://www.ancient.eu/article/207/what-happened-to-the-grea...
Oy vey. I don't know how serious this is but it's not a great look. Is this kind of thing common in the art world?
I find old clay tablets, and ancient writings in general, absolutely fascinating - particularly the randomness of the information that we can get from them. The oldest person whose name we know is from a signature on a receipt for some oil or some other merchandise.[1] It's slightly incredible when you realize that you have no idea who the ruler at the time was, or what he (or she did) but you can pinpoint precisely which goods exchanged hands on a specific date.
Sure. The British museum used to be fairly brazen about the fact that they'd loot less-developed countries for cultural artifacts. Who do you think used to sponsor archaeology expeditions?
Are you sure about that? It seems that at least online businesses don't work that way.[1]
1. https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/self-employment-taxes/s...
> If your business has a physical presence, or “nexus”, in a state, you must collect applicable sales taxes from online customers in that state.
> If you do not have a physical presence, you generally do not have to collect sales tax for online sales. However, in June of 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that will likely change this exemption to collecting sales tax.
It's not immediately clear to me why, when someone in Oklahoma City purchases an object from someone in London, anyone should be paying a New York sales tax.
> [...] authorities said it bought thousands of artifacts that had been smuggled out of Iraq. Some of the items on display at the Museum of the Bible had been looted from previously unknown archaeological sites.
Breathtakingly unethical.
Don't forget this is the group that voluntarily funded research that eventually proved some of their most prized possessions were, in fact, forgeries[0], so we have to assume they have at least a modicum of ethics.
[0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/museum-of...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_Lobby_smuggling_scandal
I'd suggest being open about forgery shows they're interested in getting their money's worth from their feeders.
Given the nature of the business, that would have been breathtakingly naive of them. There's a certain point at which naivety isn't credible.
Since it would be a pity to spend so much on a painting you never get to see there are companies that will create a replica of your beautiful tax liability so that you can enjoy your multi-million dollar investment. Rumor has it these replicas are so good they occasionally get “mistaken” for the real thing and the worthless art ends up in storage while the expensive art ends up hanging in the wealthy collector’s living room tax-free. Oops. Classic mixup.
Oh yes, it seems so common that it's more or less openly advertised:
https://www.wealthmanagement.com/art-auctions-antiques-repor...
And art collectors are not infrequently involved in shady schemes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urs_Schwarzenbach#VAT_fraud_an...
Forced people to come to work at their stores despite orders to close during pandemic as definitely not "essential". Their reason? "god" spoke to owner's wife and said to stay open.
You also may remember them from suing against ACA for religion exemptions against allowing their employees to have access to the pill under insurance (they oddly won).
This is the same as when you buy something on Amazon and the tax is based on your delivery destination, rather than Amazon's distribution centers or headquarters. It is lawful and makes sense.
"In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, Hobby Lobby accused the auction house Christie’s of “deceitful and fraudulent conduct” in connection with an ancient tablet bearing a fragment of Gilgamesh. The suit claims “fraud and breach of express and implied warrant” in connection with the tablet, and seeks the return of what it paid for the tablet. In a statement on Tuesday, Christie’s said the lawsuit was related to an unidentified dealer’s admission of illegal activity “predating Christie’s involvement” with the tablet."
Interesting how few are interested in the defense that Hobby Lobby was a victim.
They weren't. With this tablet, maybe they never had any solid reason to suspect it had been looted. This wasn't the only artifact they bought, other items had no documentation detailing their history and they made purchases after being warned that items were likely illegal. It's doubtful they tried very hard to verify this tablets history given their record.
There are other criminals involved, but Hobby Lobby was not a victim.
Or if Hobby Lobby hadn't publicly accepted that these actions were illegal.
That said, knowingly buying counterfeits is illegal. If you have good reason to suspect it's counterfeit before buying, you could be charged.
Not bad for hobby lobby, damned if they do and dammed if they don’t.
Do you want to explain why they also purchased artifacts from private dealers in the United Arabs Emirate? Or how Christie's is responsible for their illegal import of the Gilgamesh Tablet?
>Not bad for hobby lobby, damned if they do and dammed if they don’t.
I assume that is why they already accepted their guilt and paid a three million dollar fine.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/05/hobby-lobby-fine-i...
Besides, I think the negative sentiment towards them is obviously politically driven, and not some genuine concern for artifact provenance and ownership.
About a third of the time. That's why modern paintings are more valuable than older ones.
HL is still culpable here, but Christie's absolutely is guilty too.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/nyregion/hobby-lobby-arti...
This is just one page in the years-long story of Hobby Lobby's theft of thousands of antiquities. [1] Their attempt to pin one little piece of it on Christie's would, regardless of its legal merits, be met with boredom or skepticism even if the company weren't run by far-right religious fanatics.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/united-states-files-civ...
Is it particularly credible? Like, this is a notoriously dodgy field where it's really up to the purchaser to do due diligence.
hobby lobby is family owned and the family uses the company as a piggy bank for their museum of the bible. they have had multiple scandals involving counterfeits and artifacts of undocumented provenance over the last ten years. their negligence is beyond doubt.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/museum-...
How does this tablet differ from any other artifact in a museum? Couldn't it be argued that any ancient artifact from another culture is stolen?
The same actions today would be considered deeply uncool (which they are IMO), and also illegal in many jurisdictions. It's not right for a country's cultural treasures to be put on display permanently (loans are OK, I guess) in a museum thousands of miles away where most of the people of that country have no chance of admiring them.
It's a thorny problem. That local and often very impoverished communities will value their history enough to pay the costs of protecting it from being (legally or illegally) sold off in bits to the international market, is not a given. Local museums are often a cornerstone of establishing that value.
There's a gradient between the two, and the line between them tends to be drawn rather arbitrarily - but it does exist.
Lots of the early archeology exported antiquities legally. At the time most of the Middle East, Greece included, was ruled by the Ottoman Empire that granted official permissions for western archeologists to take objects or even whole buildings and edifices. I'm not well enough versed in the topic to know what deals covered these actions, whether they were shady in some degree or if the Empire just didn't care that much.
One of the more famous and contentious examples is the Elgin Marbles: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles
But this answer can't satisfy anyone who cares about the issue, because there's no good argument that these exports were legitimate, just legal. Compare the Soviet Union's early efforts to sell off treasure and art belonging to the Czar -- they couldn't do it, because no one would buy their stolen goods. (Eventually, this broke down as the Soviets stayed in power.)
Saying it's fine for the British Museum to have Greek antiquities because the Ottoman Empire, the mortal enemies of the Greeks, gave them permission to take whatever they wanted... looks ridiculous. Imagine China freely granting permission to foreign archaeologists to dismantle and export Tibetan palaces and monasteries.
The British Museum is embroiled in many such controversies[1] and has put up statements around their Parthenon sculptures[2]. Large artifacts have been returned by nation states[3].
Generally, as I understand it, museums will keep artifacts they obtained under a framework that was legal at the time of its construction. Modern critics point out that these legal frameworks likely would not have been accepted by the population of the country giving up the artifact.
The Hobby Lobby artifacts do not even have a questionable legal framework as a fig leaf over their theft. They were taken in violation of international law as well as Iraqi and US law.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/04/british-museum...
[2] https://www.britishmuseum.org/parthenon-sculptures-trustees-...
Meanwhile the Louvre is so big (>2.5x the size) that you have to pace yourself.
But that's not what was really disappointing. I had a vague comprehension that the British Museum contained artifacts that other countries wanted repatriated, and then I walked in and I knew. I knew exactly what they were talking about.
It didn't feel like a museum. It felt like I had wandered into a pirates treasure cave. Other museums have works that were purchased through channels, or loaned out. They have cultural artifacts and archaeological pieces that are contemporary to the region, offering vignettes into history, how we got to be here today.
I was just looking at colonial plunder. In an era where sane people would be scrambling to define themselves any other way.
Whaat! I visited the British museum for the first time a couple years ago. I spent two whole days there and still didn't see everything I wanted to!
> But that's not what was really disappointing. I had a vague comprehension that the British Museum contained artifacts that other countries wanted repatriated, and then I walked in and I knew. I knew exactly what they were talking about. It didn't feel like a museum. It felt like I had wandered into a pirates treasure cave.
However this, I get. I can definitely see that point of view dampening your experience.
What matters most to me is whether it was stolen or whether it was legally sold, legally abandoned, etc
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/dead-sea-s...
"Hobby Lobby said that it was new to the world of antiquities when it began acquiring historical items for its Museum of the Bible in 2009 and made mistakes in relying on dealers and shippers who “did not understand the correct way to document and ship” them."
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/nyregion/hobby-lobby-arti...
2. https://www.thedailybeast.com/hobby-lobby-scandal-widens-as-...
3. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jan/09/a-scandal-in-ox...
The problem here was fraudulent provenance documents. Ideally, every item that goes up for auction would have its provenance investigated. In practice, that's too expensive for the auction houses.
(edit: to be clear what I mean is that it's extremely bizarre that a discount tchochke store in the US would own an extremely precious Mesopotamian artifact in the first place, not bizarre that justice is actually being done about it)
(the similarities between hobby lobby stealing tablets and religiously motivated tech magnates doing the same in a certain cyberpunk book of wide repute are, as usual, a bit eerie)
"United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Approximately...
In rem cases have fun titles in general. :D
So what is the definition of "looted" here? Museums are full of things that fit various definitions of that word.
No one with any power seriously wants the Kohinoor back so it's not going to go back. But having an artifact taken from your country during a war of invasion is going to create lots of pressure on you.
It's just realpolitik.
I think an extremely conservative rule is that if it was taken after the original playstation was released, that's looting.
Many institutions built their collections through a practice known as partage or division of finds. They would go to a government and offer their services as archeologists in exchange for a portion of their finds. While this practice is rare post-1970, there's not any serious debate about the legitimacy of cultural heritage exported under this regime.
Purchases from the antiquities markets are also considered legitimate, assuming the export was originally done with the permission of the originating country.
Where things really get questionable is when material culture was extracted by imperial power or as spoils of war. The Rosetta Stone is the most famous example. Also, you've got things like the Elgin Marbles that were taken through fraud and subterfuge a long time ago. These kinds of things are grandfathered in as a legal matter, but there's a moral argument for returning them anyway.
> The U.S. dealer bought several pieces, including the Gilgamesh tablet, for $50,350.
What are you basing that on?
The Elgin marbles are safe in the British Museum. Would they have been safe, left where they were found, for 100 years?
Being PC about antiquities is intellectually interesting. But practically, it means many antiquities will be broken up, lost or hidden.
Come on! The Nazis systematically plundered art treasures across Europe. After the war much of that was lost. There is not really much doubt on this.
I really wish you would do some research before spouting off with ill-informed opinions. The Nazis and Italians conquered Greece during WW2, they didn't take Acropolis marbles.
Anyway, Elgin 'rescued' the marbles after a period of particularly egregious destruction of Greek history. Much was lost, blown up or deliberately demolished. If the Greeks didn't give a damn, why should Elgin be blamed for caring?
Your logic is absurd. Should a rich and stable nation steal all things of historical value from a poorer nation, in the name of history preservation?
> The Elgin marbles are safe in the British Museum. Would they have been safe, left where they were found, for 100 years?
It frankly doesn't matter. It was the right of the native people to decide what to do with them.
None of that argument actually addresses the safety of the artifacts, which is my single point I'm making here.
Argue all we like about what 'should' be. The reality is, they were lost once and could be lost again. All in support of the 'native people', who in these cases would include hungry looters.
One is 'better' than the other, only from a comfortable armchair far from the turmoil.
Do you want to share the natural resources of your own nation with others for free? If not, how on earth is it OK to snatch that of others from them, just because they fit your historical curiosity? This is basically saying we are superior people, and we need to keep things away from the hand of barbarians.
No. But two wrongs don't make a right.
> a methodical effort of record-keeping and analysis is wrong, simply because of the thieves nationality?
When the thieves illegally steal a nation's artifacts and illegally sell them to a private buyer? Yes.
> One is 'better' than the other, only from a comfortable armchair far from the turmoil.
... he said, from a comfortable armchair far from the turmoil.
you paint an unfair picture.
you fail to mention that, in the case of this argument at least, preserving the artifact by means of foreign intervention may very well result in the starvation of the would-be local thieves.
many would argue that the loss of any human life is greater than the loss of all the world's artifacts.
It isn't really that unfounded a concept.
A well studied and documented artifact has only a specific amount of practical importance, aside from some sort of cultural significance. A human life has an unknown future, be it good or evil -- and unlimited (human) possibility if given the opportunities.
It's a fairly simple value proposition when simplified unreasonably this way : "Do you let another human die for the sake of storing an already studied artifact in a location where the object is safer?"
It is obvious that the people who think otherwise employ double moral standards and would never agree to the theft of their country's cultural heritage under similar conditions.
The Iraqi dictatorship was not stable at all. There were constant purges, murders, by Saddam Hussein's regime. That occurred the entire time Saddam was in power. Please explain how that's a stable situation.
The fact that Saddam had to constantly murder members of his own government, demonstrates beyond doubt that it was not stable at all. The routine execution of members of the Iraqi Government was required due to the extreme instability that such an oppressive minority dictatorship prompts.
And off course, stability is relative. Compared to the current state of affairs, Iraqi government 20 years back was far more stable.
But I think I'm with Danny Hillis, anything buried and forgotten is safer than anything in a museum.
There's a safe, climate controlled, stable spot waiting for them in Athens now. They would not be left in the elements to be ruined if Britain were to choose to return them.
The tablet leaves the country. The government is aware, but pretends otherwise. Money flows into the country to pay for the tablet. The government reports the tablet missing, then gets it back. Repeat, for a nice flow of cash.
Selling the same object multiple times must be profitable.
I highly doubt HobbyLobby owners didn't know origin of this tablet.
http://washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/heavily-in-debt-ne...