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Comment by lotux | Hacker News Reader

British Museum itself is the master of all thieves, should return everything to real owners

I very much wanted to make the, have a navy and invade everyone, joke. But this isn’t Reddit.

I’m not sure how this all works going forward. There were some plausible arguments about protecting artifacts, the uk was pretty stable in comparison.

This article seems to make it clear, that’s no longer the case. If you have some money, seems like you can bribe out whatever artifacts you want.

Ironically UK, (along with the US (morseo)) strategically destabilise some of these very countries.

Brainwashed theft and murder justifying sociopaths are so dumb that it's hilarious. They're like mind-controlled puppets.

There are clear cut cases like with Pantheon, but for many artefacts there are no real owners left. Their cultures have been wiped out, and the people who wiped them out were wiped out too.

And frankly it's fine to care about survival of (otherwise publicly accessible) pieces of art and culture first and foremost. There's not going to be more of them.

>There are clear cut cases like with Pantheon

The fact that these aren't handed back really shows the true colours though. The one that personally disgusts me is the Irish Giant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Byrne_(giant)

A man who's only wish in life was not to end up a museum and the British stole his bones and put him on display.

Yes, it was indeed unethical and there are many moral and legal arguments that the skeleton should receive a burial, but the stealing was arranged by a Scottish surgeon and not the British government. It was removed from display last year. There seems to be some additional legal issues too, at least for the board of the museum: "since 1799 its trustees had been legally bound to preserve the collection of John Hunter – the pioneering Scottish surgeon and anatomist who the museum is named after – in its entirety" [1]

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20231127211244/https://www.thegu...

it’s not possible to be legally bound to commit a crime, so if those “legal issues” (nice euphemism) are great enough then it doesn’t matter what some dead dudes agreed to. the contract is toilet paper from 400 years ago, even if you really like the dudes and the current state of affairs.

Parthenon (Athens), not Pantheon (Rome).

As far as survival of arts and culture, the whole problem is that they aren’t the steward of historical treasures that threy claim to be. It’s insane that the British Museum, one of the preeminent museums in the world, is having stuff stolen from them, and can’t even identify what is stolen because they haven’t catalogued everything. If they want to claim that antiquities will be kept up for future generations, then they at least need to take that role seriously.

Naturally it's a good point in a thread about stealing from said museum (and yes I butchered the name). However its track record has been comparatively good, even if more due to geographic isolation of Britain and stability of its political system than anything else.

I don’t think they’ve been horrible stewards. And the British Museum is delightful to visit. I’m just pointing out that it’s a bit rich to loudly proclaim that you are the best stewards of antiquities (that other countries might otherwise have better claims to) and then not do simple things like properly catalogue your collections.

The legal ownership of the Elgin Marbles is anything but clear cut.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles

It's funny when brainwashed people try to justify theft and plundering other countries. It comes out hilariously evil and dumb.

They are the real owners. They aren't the original owners. Most items today don't lie with their original owners.

Proclaiming that because they didn't make it, they aren't the owners is hilarious and wrong. Even if they became owners through force.

Most of the countries these artifacts come from don’t have the ability to properly store and protect them. Not to mention mass looting and stealing that would/could occur in the more politically unstable countries.

History have never seen looters like Brits and France, not even Mogols come close

for your reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looty_(dog)

I’d bet the Mongols looted and destroyed far more stuff than Brits/France on a percentage basis.

> Most of the countries these artifacts come from don’t have the ability to properly store and protect them.

ok, but the problem this article is discussing is that the British museum doesn’t have that ability either.

if you don’t know what objects you even have, how could you possibly be ensuring the proper storage conditions?

Absolutely wild logic that gets thrown around when it comes time to defend looting and pillaging that in many cases occurred during living memory or not far removed.

Can't understand how they brainwash people to accept theft, murder, and plundering other countries. What did they do to you to justify that? It would be an interesting field of research. Or are you just a poorly educated evil bloodthirsty sociopath?

I’m a realist who understands how the world really works and not some effete idealist.

You obviously don't understand what the word realist mean, imagine being that poorly educated while thinking you are superior. That's not being a realist it is just being propagandized and brainwashed, western exceptionalism is a mental illness like all delusional supremacist ideologies.

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