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Comment by piokoch | Hacker News Reader

Well, visit British Museum, you will learn what is professional looting (a.k.a. robbery), not some amateurish second hand purchases done by those hobbyists.

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The British Museum saved many artifacts which would have been destroyed by various nutty religious types ( a' la Greens ) over the centuries.

In doing so, I doubt that they broke any export regulations.

And entrance to the British Museum is free, for everyone.

Not taking any sides other than that of conservation, do you think it's possible that the Greens have already saved many artifacts from nutty religious types like ISIS, and that their efforts will continue to do so in the future?

I mean I’m not a conservator of ancient artifacts, but the pictures [0] of them dunking mummy masks in dish water to decompose them so they could check whether they were made with scrap bible papyrus… those did make my stomach turn a little. Felt a little closer to desecration that preservation.

[0] TFA links to https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/dead-men-tell-tales/148...

It makes me sick also. The Greens are nutcases. As for the mummy mask, what they did is criminal.

No they did not. They are just encouraging and creating an illegal market. The US also lacked proper laws against the importation of antiquities. For all we know it could have come into the states on a military plane and ISIS would have nothing to do with it. No museum worth its salt, with professional curators and staff would have accepted such a "loot" and as a matter of fact also reputable auctioneers. In any case it is important to study artifacts in the context where they were found, stratigraphy, nearby archaeological sites etc.

To be honest and I am from Cyprus, the BM paid for a lot of archaeological expeditions at a time when Antiquity Laws were laxed and the expeditions could take 2/3 of the finds. The 19th century was another story, Cesnola for example (the, then American Ambassador to Cyprus) literally smuggled almost 30,000 objects, which formed the basis of the Metropolitan Museum.

Whataboutism aside, claiming that collecting tens of thousands of artifacts for a museum operated in Washington DC, is a hobbyist endeavor, is clearly wrong.

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