As part of the international publicity campaign to retrieve artifacts from museums around the world Egypt is set to host a conference on the subject, invited are thirty countries from around the world but apparently only sixteen can make it.
Included in all those invited countries is Italy who no doubt will be emptying Rome of it's obelisks to return to Egypt soon and Greece too demanding the return of the "Parthenon marbles" with nothing in return though the Greeks may wish to keep the marbles in their crates for the convenience of the next person who carts them away.
Missing from the list of guests is of course the powers in possession of said objects including Germany, France and maybe most important of all Great Britain. Dr. Hawass and his Greek counterpart hope that creating a big stink that they will shame the British museum out of the Rosetta stone, Elgin marbles and everything else they can get their hands on.
Attending countries :Bolivia, China, Cyprus, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Iraq, Italy, Libya, Mexico, Nigeria, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka and Syria.
One believes you hold these type of media events when you have no case in the world courts!
1 comment:
Hey Tim!
Good commentary. And you make a great point regarding the apparent conflict of interest between Egypt and Italy. I guess it's the ole "My enemy's enemy is my friend" deal.
I am sympathetic to the cause of returning ill-gotten artifacts when a reliable provenance shows that the item in question was removed illegally, or when a good case can be made for a vague provenance being a sign of such skullduggery.
But so many of the questionable artifacts were acquired before there was a really good system for accounting for their source. It really seems as if this game is rigged to place the burden of proof on the accused.
But bashing the Evil West is low-hanging fruit. It alwasy plays well locally, and populism is probably the common thread in most of the attendess of this conference.
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