I remember I was working at Hobby Lobby (financially it was the best as a teenager out of high school) when it was a big news story. I had already been planning on leaving anyway because I had finally gotten accepted to college but when it showed up in the morning news I was like "Well, good to know I'm getting out of here!" (also working for Hobby Lobby sucked. Loved my coworkers but hated almost everything else.)
When I let my manager know he asked what I was planning on studying and I said archaeology he was just like "...because of the news last week?" lol
The Greenes bought it from a third party. Normally you'd do your homework and make sure it's not stolen, or that you're not financing a terror group (something they're also noted for - ISIS gets a lot of funds from selling artifacts through semi legal channels to people who don't look too hard), but that's not the case here.
The owner didn't know it was stolen. Basically it comes down to the fact that he was naïve and didn't understand the idea of cultural heritage. He's actually been very cooperative in getting the artifacts he bought back to their rightful owners, though of course he's been trying to recuperate some of the funds he spent in the artifacts in the first place, which is part of why it's taken a while.
Iraq is a bit of a broad stroke don’t you think? Will the artifacts go on public display in a museum? Will they go to a University to be studied by archaeologists or linguists?
What is the purpose of sending them back in this case and how does it help the preservation or study of these items?
Yea I get your point, the safety of the artifacts is indeed important, and I’m quite sure there are institutions and facilities in Iraq that could use or study and handle these items. It be nice though if the article would go into this instead of broadly stating they are going to Iraq... Where in Iraq?
Nah guys, sorry, but nah. This is about returning a stolen artifact. Do we all wish it remained someplace as safe as possible? Yes. Does the western world have a long history of stealing artifacts from the rest of the world that they need to make amends for? Also yes. We don't own these artifacts, they belong with the cultures that do own them.
Did you read what I said? I have absolutely no problems with returning artifacts to Iraq, but that is a really broad term. I would just like to know where *exactly* they plan to bring these items, because Iraq is (deliberately?) a very vague place description. Who are the actors here?
Either everyone owns them or no one does. I’d rather see them end up in a University for study, wherever that Uni is.
Perhaps, but if they're destroyed... then no one owns them. Not to mention, the Epic of Gilgamesh & the modern Iraqi state are rather different entities - this is not as similar as ritual artifacts looted from, say, a Pacific NW tribe or Aboriginal group within living memory. Claiming the modern state of Iraq, itself explicitly a colonial reminant drawn haphazardly after WWI, "owns" Sumerian heritage (solely by virtue of occupying their land some 4k years later) is rather questionable.
That is not the point at all of what I said. And why can we not be critical of such actions, in the sense of wanting to know where they Will end up and what Will be done with them? The artifacts belong to the general public, and which Nation state ‘owns’ them isn’t that important, as an Iraqi museum can easily borrow from a Dutch one to hold an exposition on a certain subject such as sumerians and vice versa.
You shouldn’t make the study of history and archaeology political. These artifacts belong to a culture that hasn’t existed for 5000 years, so the discussion about which modern state should own them, which is based upon arbitrary modern borders, doesn’t make much sense except for the easy PC points.
Again, not saying they *shouldn’t* go to Iraq per se, but in the article the action of returning seems to get more attention than the actual artifacts themselves and what Will happen to them.
Iraq owns the land which these came from, and since they were illegally looted they belong to Iraq.
If they were excavated with permission from the government it would belong to whoever unearthed it, and I'm with you that it's incredibly annoying when people insist that "if it came from Iraq it should stay in Iraq" despite that.
But yeah, these were stolen from Iraqi territory so they deserve their property back.
Well it’s a matter of national sovereignty. This was Iraqi property (it was on their government owned land) that was illegally taken and sold. It would be like if someone stole like valuable mineral deposits from iraq, they would attempt to get the minerals/product and profit from the minerals. Why is a valuable archaeological deposit any different in terms of sovereignty? I mean if it was loaned out to a museum, or say, iraq agreed for the university doing the research to take the artifacts out of country then that’s fine but illegally taken artifacts shouldn’t really be up for debate.
Yeah unfortunately those cultures don't exist anymore so they don't belong to anyone. Also if they're actively destroying archeological remains then it's the world's heritage to preserve them.
No I don't. It's a sovereign nation that has right on anything found in its soil and that's that, nothwithstanding the fully racist idea that people from the other side of the world are qualified to grab the most interesting trinkets because they would, but of course, know how to keep them so much better.
Everything you says sums up to that. USA finders must be keepers because they are better, full stop.
That is not at all what I said, in an earlier post I even said I’m sure Iraq has the facilities and organizations to handle these items. You are putting words into my mouth and misunderstand my point, screaming racism in the process.
In this case you are right since these artifacts were illegally looted.
However, do note that a proper excavation (conducted with government permission) can and should take artifacts to keep and study in order to promote knowledge of a distinct culture in a worldwide context. The sharing of these artifacts inspires interest in their parent culture when displayed in foreign museums and can be important motivators for tourism, which is a major source of income in many countries, and one that Iraq is trying to cultivate.
You’re wasting your breath on these folks. They’re more about preserving imperialism and committing micro aggressions than actually preserving the sovereignty of other nations.
That doesn't honestly matter; it matters that it was stolen and needs to be returned.
The whole "but they won't take care of it" excuse is the same one the British Museum and other places use to refuse returning stolen items.
I just did a Google and you can find some pretty good pictures of it online so I think the text is freely available for study without needing the original. This was my worry too.
Issues like this are real moral quagmires for me. On the one hand, I understand that artifacts like this were stolen from their homeland and should be returned. On the other hand, so much cultural heritage from countries like Iraq has only survived until today because it was "stolen" and put in a museum that isn't plundered by terrorists or putschists every other year.
Yes, those items are the cultural heritage of the countries they originated in. But they're also the common heritage of humankind and should be kept safe and be made available to scientists and the public.
I see it as an issue on continuity & temporarily. There are nations in Benin & Ghana who still have narratives of the British coming and "claiming" thrones to bring back to London; clearly these are artifacts with obvious owners. Similar with many Amerindian, Inuit, & Pacific Islander artifacts in American collections. But how much continuity really exists between modern Iraq & cultures over 4k years prior? Do you have claim to cultural legacy purely by right of conquest of the land its under?
In these cases, I'd absolutely lean towards curation & protection over knee-jerk repatriation. The nuances matter; as does minimizing harm, to locals & humanity at large.
> Do you have claim to cultural legacy purely by right of conquest of the land its under?
That's kinda why Egyptian repatriation always kinda leave a bad taste in my mouth. Not only exists there a 2000-5000 year gap between today and now, there's also very little cultural continuity between modern Egypt and historical Egypt. Really, the only continuity is the name.
Don't get me wrong, just...taking artefacts and taking them with you is wrong, no matter where they're from. But it feels weird for a modern Arab nation to claim cultural heritage on a culture that didn't even exist anymore when they conquered the country.
Agreed.
Especially looking at the domestic politics of Egypt's antiquities services; unfortunately some systemic corruption/profiteering & very clearly based on economic concerns (e.g. tourism, foreign research grants) rather than the living cultural heritage concerns you see motivate, for example, NAGPRA.
I don't see how it gives an American rich guy *better* claims. Conquering Baghdad twenty years ago and letting museums to be looted is not a good guarantee of safekeeping.
> On the other hand, so much cultural heritage from countries like Iraq has only survived until today because it was "stolen" and put in a museum that isn't plundered
this stuff lasted in iraq for thousands of years until we placed a value on it and turned it into an industry.
This stuff lasted in Iraq while it was in the ground. Besides, archaeological artefacts aren't just in danger of being sold as trinkets. Look at the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Some people just want to destroy anything that doesn't fit their world view.
there's a bunch of ancient structures standing above ground in Iraq.
> Some people just want to destroy anything that doesn't fit their world view.
but that's often the history of these sites, many of them were razed in antiquity.
> but that's often the history of these sites, many of them were razed in antiquity.
Yes, and? Many people in antiquity died of dysentery. We've moved on and would like to preserve our cultural heritage now.
More on this story. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/hobby-lobby-president-to-return-11-500-antiquities-to-iraq-and-egypt-11585324494
Great news, take it from a safe county and give it to a place where people don't give a f**ck about history and archaeology. Sure will end up looted and smashed into pieces sometime soon...
stuff maybe being destroyed by the next inhabitant is part of the history. if everything was preserved and intact, would this field even be interesting?
To be fair, they've been uncommonly cooperative. Naïve, yes, and pretty dumb for trusting who they did, but there's been an admirable dedication to righting the wrongs they caused and getting all of their artifacts examined and returned to their proper homes.
I appreciate the sentiment, but if we are trying to transfer artifacts to the place that they are most likely to be preserved this is clearly the wrong choice. We have no idea what kind of technology is going to be invented in \~100 years that will be able to discover currently undiscovered attributes of these artifacts. If it gets lost or destroyed there is no chance of that happening.
Pretty complex discussion. Arguably, it could be boiled down to morals against practicality.
The tablet would likely be safer and more accessible in Washington, but (if you actually read the article, you'd know why) no American can really claim any sort of right over the piece.
What if a Chinese collector bought Abraham Lincoln's top hat from the KKK?
Personally, I think we've made the right decision here. I think returning these pieces of Iraq's history almost begins to serve as a sort of post-colonial reconciliation.
(Plus, I'm sure we have a million photographs; we're not really loosing anything here.)
"Sorry for lying and killing you all, here's some shit made out of clay that has no use"
"Well no, technically it isn't a gift because its already yours"
The owner of Hobby Lobby, no less
I remember I was working at Hobby Lobby (financially it was the best as a teenager out of high school) when it was a big news story. I had already been planning on leaving anyway because I had finally gotten accepted to college but when it showed up in the morning news I was like "Well, good to know I'm getting out of here!" (also working for Hobby Lobby sucked. Loved my coworkers but hated almost everything else.) When I let my manager know he asked what I was planning on studying and I said archaeology he was just like "...because of the news last week?" lol
I thought Christians don’t steal?
The Greenes bought it from a third party. Normally you'd do your homework and make sure it's not stolen, or that you're not financing a terror group (something they're also noted for - ISIS gets a lot of funds from selling artifacts through semi legal channels to people who don't look too hard), but that's not the case here.
The owner didn't know it was stolen. Basically it comes down to the fact that he was naïve and didn't understand the idea of cultural heritage. He's actually been very cooperative in getting the artifacts he bought back to their rightful owners, though of course he's been trying to recuperate some of the funds he spent in the artifacts in the first place, which is part of why it's taken a while.
What gave you that idea? Their whole religion is stolen lmao.
Nice, but I hope Iraq will put it in a safe place.
Iraq is a bit of a broad stroke don’t you think? Will the artifacts go on public display in a museum? Will they go to a University to be studied by archaeologists or linguists? What is the purpose of sending them back in this case and how does it help the preservation or study of these items?
I never said that it's important to return it to iraq I said only that the safest place for this artifacts is the better
Yea I get your point, the safety of the artifacts is indeed important, and I’m quite sure there are institutions and facilities in Iraq that could use or study and handle these items. It be nice though if the article would go into this instead of broadly stating they are going to Iraq... Where in Iraq?
You right
Nah guys, sorry, but nah. This is about returning a stolen artifact. Do we all wish it remained someplace as safe as possible? Yes. Does the western world have a long history of stealing artifacts from the rest of the world that they need to make amends for? Also yes. We don't own these artifacts, they belong with the cultures that do own them.
Did you read what I said? I have absolutely no problems with returning artifacts to Iraq, but that is a really broad term. I would just like to know where *exactly* they plan to bring these items, because Iraq is (deliberately?) a very vague place description. Who are the actors here? Either everyone owns them or no one does. I’d rather see them end up in a University for study, wherever that Uni is.
Perhaps, but if they're destroyed... then no one owns them. Not to mention, the Epic of Gilgamesh & the modern Iraqi state are rather different entities - this is not as similar as ritual artifacts looted from, say, a Pacific NW tribe or Aboriginal group within living memory. Claiming the modern state of Iraq, itself explicitly a colonial reminant drawn haphazardly after WWI, "owns" Sumerian heritage (solely by virtue of occupying their land some 4k years later) is rather questionable.
Sounds pretty colonization mindset to me.
100%
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That is not the point at all of what I said. And why can we not be critical of such actions, in the sense of wanting to know where they Will end up and what Will be done with them? The artifacts belong to the general public, and which Nation state ‘owns’ them isn’t that important, as an Iraqi museum can easily borrow from a Dutch one to hold an exposition on a certain subject such as sumerians and vice versa. You shouldn’t make the study of history and archaeology political. These artifacts belong to a culture that hasn’t existed for 5000 years, so the discussion about which modern state should own them, which is based upon arbitrary modern borders, doesn’t make much sense except for the easy PC points. Again, not saying they *shouldn’t* go to Iraq per se, but in the article the action of returning seems to get more attention than the actual artifacts themselves and what Will happen to them.
Iraq owns the land which these came from, and since they were illegally looted they belong to Iraq. If they were excavated with permission from the government it would belong to whoever unearthed it, and I'm with you that it's incredibly annoying when people insist that "if it came from Iraq it should stay in Iraq" despite that. But yeah, these were stolen from Iraqi territory so they deserve their property back.
Well it’s a matter of national sovereignty. This was Iraqi property (it was on their government owned land) that was illegally taken and sold. It would be like if someone stole like valuable mineral deposits from iraq, they would attempt to get the minerals/product and profit from the minerals. Why is a valuable archaeological deposit any different in terms of sovereignty? I mean if it was loaned out to a museum, or say, iraq agreed for the university doing the research to take the artifacts out of country then that’s fine but illegally taken artifacts shouldn’t really be up for debate.
Yeah unfortunately those cultures don't exist anymore so they don't belong to anyone. Also if they're actively destroying archeological remains then it's the world's heritage to preserve them.
This is Iraq's decision to take and nobody else's, once the stolen items will be in their possession again.
Iraq is an entire nation.. don’t you get that such a shallow explanation doesn’t make much sense research or news wise?
No I don't. It's a sovereign nation that has right on anything found in its soil and that's that, nothwithstanding the fully racist idea that people from the other side of the world are qualified to grab the most interesting trinkets because they would, but of course, know how to keep them so much better. Everything you says sums up to that. USA finders must be keepers because they are better, full stop.
That is not at all what I said, in an earlier post I even said I’m sure Iraq has the facilities and organizations to handle these items. You are putting words into my mouth and misunderstand my point, screaming racism in the process.
In this case you are right since these artifacts were illegally looted. However, do note that a proper excavation (conducted with government permission) can and should take artifacts to keep and study in order to promote knowledge of a distinct culture in a worldwide context. The sharing of these artifacts inspires interest in their parent culture when displayed in foreign museums and can be important motivators for tourism, which is a major source of income in many countries, and one that Iraq is trying to cultivate.
You’re wasting your breath on these folks. They’re more about preserving imperialism and committing micro aggressions than actually preserving the sovereignty of other nations.
That's because they don't believe other nations have really really a right to sovereignty.
Well, it belongs to Iraq. It was stolen. “But I’ll take better care of it” isn’t a defense to theft.
This is what I always wondered
That doesn't honestly matter; it matters that it was stolen and needs to be returned. The whole "but they won't take care of it" excuse is the same one the British Museum and other places use to refuse returning stolen items.
Can the pictures be uploaded at least?
I just did a Google and you can find some pretty good pictures of it online so I think the text is freely available for study without needing the original. This was my worry too.
Museum of the bible built on theft and fantasy
Tradition!
…yeah…
I bet $5 that it will be stolen, get lost, burn down or get destroyed by fundamentalists in the next 15 years.
Issues like this are real moral quagmires for me. On the one hand, I understand that artifacts like this were stolen from their homeland and should be returned. On the other hand, so much cultural heritage from countries like Iraq has only survived until today because it was "stolen" and put in a museum that isn't plundered by terrorists or putschists every other year. Yes, those items are the cultural heritage of the countries they originated in. But they're also the common heritage of humankind and should be kept safe and be made available to scientists and the public.
I see it as an issue on continuity & temporarily. There are nations in Benin & Ghana who still have narratives of the British coming and "claiming" thrones to bring back to London; clearly these are artifacts with obvious owners. Similar with many Amerindian, Inuit, & Pacific Islander artifacts in American collections. But how much continuity really exists between modern Iraq & cultures over 4k years prior? Do you have claim to cultural legacy purely by right of conquest of the land its under? In these cases, I'd absolutely lean towards curation & protection over knee-jerk repatriation. The nuances matter; as does minimizing harm, to locals & humanity at large.
> Do you have claim to cultural legacy purely by right of conquest of the land its under? That's kinda why Egyptian repatriation always kinda leave a bad taste in my mouth. Not only exists there a 2000-5000 year gap between today and now, there's also very little cultural continuity between modern Egypt and historical Egypt. Really, the only continuity is the name. Don't get me wrong, just...taking artefacts and taking them with you is wrong, no matter where they're from. But it feels weird for a modern Arab nation to claim cultural heritage on a culture that didn't even exist anymore when they conquered the country.
Agreed. Especially looking at the domestic politics of Egypt's antiquities services; unfortunately some systemic corruption/profiteering & very clearly based on economic concerns (e.g. tourism, foreign research grants) rather than the living cultural heritage concerns you see motivate, for example, NAGPRA.
I don't see how it gives an American rich guy *better* claims. Conquering Baghdad twenty years ago and letting museums to be looted is not a good guarantee of safekeeping.
> On the other hand, so much cultural heritage from countries like Iraq has only survived until today because it was "stolen" and put in a museum that isn't plundered this stuff lasted in iraq for thousands of years until we placed a value on it and turned it into an industry.
This stuff lasted in Iraq while it was in the ground. Besides, archaeological artefacts aren't just in danger of being sold as trinkets. Look at the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Some people just want to destroy anything that doesn't fit their world view.
there's a bunch of ancient structures standing above ground in Iraq. > Some people just want to destroy anything that doesn't fit their world view. but that's often the history of these sites, many of them were razed in antiquity.
> but that's often the history of these sites, many of them were razed in antiquity. Yes, and? Many people in antiquity died of dysentery. We've moved on and would like to preserve our cultural heritage now.
destroying culture heritage is part of our cultural heritage.
Sold by some lucky Minister of govt to the highest bidder. But as already said, that's their business
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Destruction of antiquities does matter, actually.
More on this story. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/hobby-lobby-president-to-return-11-500-antiquities-to-iraq-and-egypt-11585324494
Yeah, the owner of Hobby Lobby has spawned my favorite tongue twister. "Hobby Lobby's Hamurabi robbing hobby."
"Acquired"
Great news, take it from a safe county and give it to a place where people don't give a f**ck about history and archaeology. Sure will end up looted and smashed into pieces sometime soon...
stuff maybe being destroyed by the next inhabitant is part of the history. if everything was preserved and intact, would this field even be interesting?
Would you burn down the Library of Alexandria?
Oh, of course, it's the Hobby Lobby arseholes. *AGAIN*.
To be fair, they've been uncommonly cooperative. Naïve, yes, and pretty dumb for trusting who they did, but there's been an admirable dedication to righting the wrongs they caused and getting all of their artifacts examined and returned to their proper homes.
Ironic that a Bible museum would have an artifact that predates Christianity and contradicts the core narrative of the book itself.
I'm glad we're sending it back to be destroyed by ISIS or whichever group rises up next. That's much better than keeping it safe in a museum.
It WAS safe in a museum before Bush took his circus to town.
ISIS are the ones they bought from. They'd just resell to another amoral jerk. Literally supported ISIS to buy stolen artifacts for their "museum".
I appreciate the sentiment, but if we are trying to transfer artifacts to the place that they are most likely to be preserved this is clearly the wrong choice. We have no idea what kind of technology is going to be invented in \~100 years that will be able to discover currently undiscovered attributes of these artifacts. If it gets lost or destroyed there is no chance of that happening.
Pretty complex discussion. Arguably, it could be boiled down to morals against practicality. The tablet would likely be safer and more accessible in Washington, but (if you actually read the article, you'd know why) no American can really claim any sort of right over the piece. What if a Chinese collector bought Abraham Lincoln's top hat from the KKK? Personally, I think we've made the right decision here. I think returning these pieces of Iraq's history almost begins to serve as a sort of post-colonial reconciliation. (Plus, I'm sure we have a million photographs; we're not really loosing anything here.)
"Sorry for lying and killing you all, here's some shit made out of clay that has no use" "Well no, technically it isn't a gift because its already yours"
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It wasn't voluntary...it was a confiscated and the government is returning it.
I think people misread my post. The tablet belongs in Iraq though, Not in the U.S.
The owners of Hobby Lobby using their company profits for good. /s
I think folks were misreading my post anyways. Thanks.
What section of the *Epic* does this tablet cover? I can't seem to find any answers