During the 2004 Summer Olympics, which took place in Athens, Greece pressured Great Britain into returning the displaced Parthenon or “Elgin” marbles by announcing intentions to build a new museum that would function as a state-of-the-art home and display for them. The British Museum did not acquiesce. On the other hand, Ethiopia saw success in 2005 when Italy returned the 160-ton Obelisk of Axum, which Mussolini had extracted in 1937.
The tone of the conversation has since turned bellicose. Egypt, in 2005, announced that it had decided to sue two museums, one in England and one in Belgium, for the return of two 4,400-year-old pharaonic carvings, taken from two tombs in Egypt that were uncovered in 1965. They are still currently held at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Britain and the Catholic University of Brussels. Egypt threatened to revoke the digging rights of the countries in question if they failed to comply. Zahi Hawass, the current director of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, has made it his priority to quickly have objects returned to Egypt, especially prominent ones such as the Rosetta Stone.
Returning treasures to their original context is unfeasible; too much has changed physically and culturally over time for them to speak more clearly in their country of origin than they do in museums, where they can be compared to large assemblies of objects from a variety of cultures. In the advanced world of the 21st century, looting and stealing artifacts should be eliminated altogether — even for the sake of preservation, but the returning of already acquired artifacts should not be expected.
Of course, the moral right of ownership is unclear — both countries in these situations have legitimate claims. Should seeing an artifact in its original geographic context outweigh its being seen by significantly more people out of that context? Granted, the Elgin Marbles may be fully appreciated if they are displayed in proximity to the Parthenon, but I believe easier access to scholars and the general public is more important — this priority means retaining them in the great museums of the world.
Some understand the idea of displaying another culture’s treasures in the West to be an imperialist anachronism, such that only civilized Westerners could truly appreciate said treasures. Whether that was true in the 19th century is dubious, and it is entirely invalid today. The display of imperial trophies in institutions such as the British Museum or the Louvre can thus be interpreted as offensive. If this is in fact offensive to the robbed cultures, does returning them make any stride towards repentance? Some artifacts were obtained through looting in war (the Benin bronzes), others under the duress of imperial force (many Chinese artifacts), or by illegally bribing the guarding officials (the Elgin Marbles).
Lord Elgin’s bribes, which were a common way of facilitating business under the Ottoman Empire, legitimized Britain’s claim to the Marbles, based upon a written contract made by the internationally recognized authorities in Athens at the time. While some Benin bronzes were unquestionably looted, other “colonial trophies” were freely sold; indeed, some were made specifically for sale in Europe.
Essentially, returning these artifacts would be doubly detrimental: it would set a precedent that could lead to the liquidation of the collections of museums, and, by decentralizing these important artifacts, would leave the world culturally poorer. Returning artifacts would place them in geographical and cultural ghettos, whereby Greek sculptures could only be viewed in Greece, or Egyptian mummies in Egypt.
So to what degree does preservation of artifacts take precedence over all else? Sometimes it may be legitimate for foreign countries to remove artifacts to preserve or save them. In the case of the Parthenon marbles, Lord Elgin’s removing them was an act of rescue as the Ottoman authorities were pillaging them for use as building stone, disregarding any classical Greek heritage. Furthermore, had they been returned in 1830 upon Greek independence, the heavily polluted air of Athens would likely have caused serious deterioration. Similar problems face the return of artifacts to various African museums; specifically, wooden figures would decay in the humid atmosphere. By 1998, corruption had led to the disappearance of 50 pieces of art from Nigeria’s premier museum.
As the age of imperialism and colonization has ended, lootings and artifact-taking are not acceptable by modern standards of conduct. For the most part, however, the current ownership of artifacts should remain at status quo, in their foreign showcases.
Aaron Applbaum is a freshman from Oakland, Calif. He can be reached at applbaum@princeton.edu.