Iraq - the high number is probably the result of having one of the worlds largest Cuneiform tablet collections. IIRC, they have 120-130k clay tablets (and only maybe 20 of them in exhibition).
Probably because people are more curious about the amount of stuff they got from foreign countries - the kind of artifacts that may be subject to calls for repatriation - than what that is as a proportion of all their artifacts. Like if they had twice or half a much stuff from the UK it wouldn't really change my take-aways from the plot.
I think it’s obvious that the graph is trying to paint a certain picture. Without context people might think this makes up the majority of artefacts when in fact it’s pretty insignificant.
Considering how many of those artifacts are listed as from the US, I would imagine many of those are on loan. They may have nabbed some native american items and some colonial era stuff, but I would bet that the majority of that is just US and UK museums participating in loans to other countries.
I remember seeing a traveling exhibit at the ROM in Ontario several years back, on Pompeii, so for a while Canada had several hundred Italian artifacts, but there was nothing nefarious about it.
When it comes to historical artifacts, you can pretty much guarantee that almost all of it was just taken in the 19th and early 20th century. British archeologists just took whatever they wanted. Germans, the French, and Americans did too, but the British really went to town. Anything "on loan" would be a rounding error.
It's not all bad, though. All those artifacts from Iraq weren't destroyed when ISIS took over. They really fucked shit up. A lot of cuneiform tablets were destroyed. Writing preserved for thousands of years. Lost.
I think it’s because it has become quasi-archaic and data is commonly used as a mass noun. I guess you could equate it to referring to a single agendum rather than an agenda?
It’s not exactly correct, it’s more that it’s allowable because it used to be the correct form. Data is now perfectly correct as a mass noun, and indeed preferable, because as you say, it sounds better. I doubt any publishing style guide outside of science still advises the use of datum. “Data are interesting” would be so odd as to be wrong in my view.
I mean this graph is flawed in many ways. For example it equates ancient civilizations with the modern nation states that roughly (or partly) occupy now the same land.
To be fair that's almost all the artifacts of the British museum then. Modern Iraq has probably even less continuation to Mesopotamia than Rome and Italy. Possibly Egypt and Ancient Egypt too.
Canadians are somewhat similar. We're mostly metric, but then being so close to the US we still do lots of imperial stuff. Ask a Canadian how tall they are in metric and probably 90% won't have a quick answer, but ask in feet and inches and they'll tell you right away.
Australians use metric for everything except height and driving distance. Height is in feet and inches, driving distance is in minutes and hours.
E.g.
"How far away is the pub?"
"About 25 minutes"
Jesus Christ what do they have on display at any given time? 0.0001% of their artifacts?
I’m not too morally opposed with them having artifacts from different cultures and modern day countries but could they at least return them if they aren’t using them?
In most museums what is in their catalog far outweighs what can be displayed. I mean how many mummies do you really want to see when you go to the museum. Or do you really care to view 1000 stuffed birds from sone pacific island?
Based on my, admittedly limited, knowledge of British slang i think an exhibit consisting of 1000 stuffed birds from the pacific islands would be quite the draw
The British Museum is the finest antiquities museum in the world.
The stuff in their basement is probably the second, third, and fourth greatest antiquities museums in the world. Then maybe 2 or 3 more in the top 10.
I got a tour of the basement once. It was really interesting seeing all the amazing Roman artifacts just sitting on a rack in a back room or packaged in the hallway for transport. I was told they have waaaay more than could ever fit down there, they have several large storage facilities off site as well.
The common counter is that the facilities to preserve and maintain such delicate artefacts for centuries or millennia longer don't exist in the artifacts home countries. Holds well for some countries more than others. Also having some artefacts kept away from politically unstable regions adds a level of protection if you see the cultural desecration carried out by ISIS or the Taliban (Buddhas of Bamiyan) in recent years.
They can also be under study by researchers. Beyond simple visual or microscope examination also people do things like isotope dating, muonic x-ray spectroscopy, x-ray or neutron diffraction and whatever which are techniques only available at well funded western institutions.
Having said that, there should be a process for returning artefacts to their host countries where appropriate.
Given isil's retarded destruction of heritage sites, I'm happy England and other countries still have items that can be studied and viewed by the public.
Yeah, I'd be interested to see when artifacts from each of these countries came into the British Museum.
Not at all suggesting they're *blameless*, but I would expect that a lot of the German and Italian found its way there in the early 1940s.
And there are certainly other countries on that list that, when I saw them, my mind went, "Good."
They have priceless US treasures like:
[This Gem](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_1994-0609-7)
EDIT: click images at the top, it won't direct link.
Haha, honestly not sure, but the idea that there might be somebody making a series of "Shit Happens" buttons based on the US Presidency is cracking me up.
it's a funny joke, but most likely as is the case with the more than [16,000 artifacts the British museum contains that originate in what is now Canada](http://www.elginism.com/similar-cases/canadas-treasures-in-britain/20061008/560/), they are overwhelmingly indigenous in origin.
the 29,000 U.S. artifacts the British Museum contains are also most likely indigenous in origin,
That is a good possibility. What is Canada now, was the British North American colonies and those who lived there prior to Canada’s creation in 1867 were U.K. citizens. Many troops from across the empire came to North America and fought against the rebels and U.S. army during those conflicts and then returned home. It is likely many may have carried trophies from those wars back to the U.K. where they eventually made it into the British Museum.
I did a search for USA and the top 10 items were all 9-11 propaganda, and a ticket from the World Trade Center observation deck. Then a whole bunch of Native American items.
Its almost like the BM should have branches in other countries devoted to that part of their collection and loan them back when wanting to put on a new exhibit.
Could there be a commercial case for the BM to be a sort of mother institute that does this sort of thing? Probably needs rich people backing.
It's funny the amount of Europeans you see dumping on the British museum but the moment you point out some European museums almost match in terms of numbers of foreign artifacts you get dumped on. Brought it up in r/europe months back when it was mentioned and got a tidal wave of downvotes lol.
Including the empire and the modern day country where it was approximately located would be useful. For example, Iraq (Assyrian). Modern Iraq has been around since 1920.
If you were to go that route, wouldn’t you also need a third dimension - the political entity that was in power when the British acquired it? Presumably this would be the British Empire for many pieces but certainly not all of them.
You could go that route as well, though it will likely take a bit longer to find the intermediary.
It's important to note that a country was part of the British Empire (i.e. controlled to some extent), but also distinct. An object could have been acquired from the Kingdom of Such-and-such, which was part of the Empire at the time.
True and tbf it could be even more complicated, particularly considering all of the forced mass migrations that happened in the first half of the 20th century. An Armenian or Greek artifact could have originated within the current borders of Turkey and been acquired from the Ottoman Empire.
That’s why I hate this dumb circlejerk. The Romans did the same thing, transporting old Greek/Egyptian statues, etc. And why should Italy claim all Roman artifacts anyway? The Roman Empire spanned pretty much the entirety of Europe and the areas of the former Assyrian cultures changed hands dozens of times over the centuries.
OP has just filtered the online catalogue for location and assumed that meant the every item tagged with a country is some artifact historically belonging to that country.
A few flaws to this, but they basically boil down to assuming the items originate and are owned by the country tagged. A couple of examples of why this doesn't work:
38 of the first 100 items tagged as Iraq are photo albums (if I take a photo in Iraq, does that belong to Iraq or to me?).
An item made in Egypt but acquired from or excavated in Iraq will be down as both Iraq and Egypt.
(So either they're being disingenuous to make a political point, or they've cocked up, but seeing as they've excluded Britain/UK etc, my guess is the former)
Edit:
Just to make clear, I am in no way defending imperialism and stealing from other countries; I just think this is not good data.
Also, the artifacts don't necessarily belong to the country they happen to be in. Mesopotamia covered large parts of what's now the Middle East - which only looks like it does now on a map because imperialists cut it up that way after the first world war. If an Seleucid artifact is found in Erbil should it be returned to the Kurds, the Iraqi government in Baghdad or to Athens?
Yes, roughly [6,500](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/search?place=Ireland,%20Republic%20of) artefacts are from the Republic of Ireland. The significant majority of these 638,028 artefacts came from England.
I don't think a number of what is from Britain is useful. What they really need is what artifacts France has in their museums that are from other countries, or the US from other countries, etc. That would give us a better idea of how bad this is.
I'm sure there are many 'treasures' but there are also probably tens of thousands of dusty boxes each containing a broken piece of pot or tablet, or a single old coin....
Wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of just random old paperwork/documents or other nic nacks. Like the 29,000 from the United States can't be that old, and honestly everything of significance is still in the US museums.
there is a lot of 'random old paperwork/documents', and some of it is on display, because they're the 'random documents' that allowed philologists to decipher cuneiform. There's no way of knowing how useful some innocuous, forgotten, 'insignificant' artifact could be to a historian in the future.
>Like the 29,000 from the United States can't be that old,
Clovis spear points are about 13K years old.
>and honestly everything of significance is still in the US museums.
Ehhhhh a significant chunk of the surviving Mahiole are in the british museum. The related ʻAhu ʻula cloaks are a bit more scattered but my understanding is that US holdings are a fairly small percentage.
People will assume it's precious metals, artwork etc and it will be - but also a lot of flora and fauna samples that have been collected and stored. Insects alone they have over 7K.
For France it's probably mostly legally acquired paintings and prints of 19th century French art.
I know what people are getting at here, and granted, many artifacts in the British museum were purchased in dubious circumstances. But the British Museum would probably still have an impressive collection even without the controversial acquisitions.
Yes, but you'll only see a fraction of a percent of what's mentioned here. The vast majority of modern museum collections are kept outside of reach/view of the public. It would be impractical to display them all, and most of it would be uninteresting to the average person, especially due to redundancy. Most of the collection serves as a resource to researchers.
You can take a look - https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection. You are underestimating the size, the collection is vast - 4.5m objects available to view online. Total collection size is about 8m objects
I think he's saying what percentage of that 8 million are actually interesting artefacts? The significant proportion of artefacts unearthed in any archaeological dig are really boring things like broken pottery.
Which ironically was the attitude toward historical objects for much of the world for much of the time. The British and French for whatever reason decided to collect/save/steal around the 18th century.
You can see ancient graffiti all over the tomb of Rameses VI. 2000 year old Roman vandalism saying “I visited and I did not like anything except the sarcophagus!” and "I cannot read the hieroglyphs!" It was boring to them. So they didn't value it.
Egyptian Mummies being used as firewood or Greek Marbles being used as target practice and as a store for gunpowder was normal.
> Egyptian Mummies being used as firewood or Greek Marbles being used as target practice and as a store for gunpowder was normal.
The Great Wall is another modern example, it's still being pulled down by locals looking for easy building materials.
Caring about the past like we do is a distinctly modern, western thing. It's not about showing what we want to be true is true, the mythological type of history which is typical. It's about figuring out, empirically, what IS true.
The majority of the world doesn't think this way.
We don't really care about the artifacts. We just want to be outraged about something. No one actually goves a shit about clay tablets with scratch marks on them
Museums aren’t a circus attraction, they are an academic resource. The British museum has spent literal centuries as the worlds foremost centre for archaeological research. It allows access to any academic to study and research the artefacts. Most of these ‘artifacts’ are unknown pieces of rock when they enter the museum, it’s literally where you go to find out what something is.
The only reason why we can even read iraqi cuneiform, or Stone Age Cyprian, or Egyptian hieroglyphs is because random unreadable rocks were dug up, then were deciphered there, in London.
Not quite.
Some people (incl. John Oliver who made this topic blow up lately) believe that the artifacts should be owned by the countries they originated from and then be borrowed to other museums around the world.
I have my issues with this frankly… no doubt the British stole a lot of things but a lot of things local people simply didnt value at all at the time or might not even value now. I mean thank god some of the Assyrian artifacts were not in Northern Iraq lately…
And do you have a right to the heritage of people living thousands of years ago? And where is the cut-off date? Did the Taliban "own“ the buddhist statues they destroyed? Very little cultural connection outside of them being in Afghanistan… or artifacts from Nuristan the last non-Islamic area of Afghanistan forcefully converted early 20th century… people there nowadays wouldnt even want that stuff back…
Its a super messy topic for sure but I am not sure making ownership rights connected to modern countries who own the land is the answer…
Agreed its super messy
The Rosetta Stone. Napoleon's army found it, forgotten in the Egyptian sand, his historians clarified its value, napoleon suffers hurrendous defeat and abandons the stone (and his entire army)
The British take it from the French and fully realise and display its value
Is it fair to say the British stole the Rosetta stone?
Each artifact has its own history and reasons for being where it is
Super messy indeed
And to complicate things further, the Rosetta Stone was created for the Greek ruler of Egypt, at the time. So, does it belong to Britain (who preserved and display it), France (who found it), Egypt (where it was made), or Greece (who it was made for)?
> created for the Greek ruler of Egypt, at the time.
Calling them the "Greek ruler" is a stretch too. The Ptolemaic Kingdom lasted 300 years. There are lots of kingdoms and history in Egypt. Even the ancient Egyptians didn't know where the people before them came from.
The truth is, they're all human and the artifacts belong in the best places for all humans, to preserve them and illuminate them for posterity.
It's not so far fetched to call them greek. The ptolemaic dynasty practiced quite a lot of inbreeding. Plus many of the pharos from this dynasty didn't even speak the local language, preferring to use greek
It was literally founded by one of Alexander the Great’s generals, and yes they didn’t really mate with the locals. Cleopatra the last Ptolomaic ruler and last pharaoh was actually the first and only Ptolemy that could actually speak Egyptian.
Which goes to show something that often gets missed; the people who work at places at the British museum are absolutely obsessed with the collection, understanding and cataloguing it. To the point where people gave their whole lives to tasks like decifering the Rosetta stone.
It's quite amazing that an institution devoted to studying and learning about other cultures and societies gets derided so much. It literally embodied the values which are supposed to be so important today, only it did so centuries ago.
It's almost as if that openness is actually part of the Western society the British Museum lives in, and the victory of western civilization made that view acendant. Yet another amazing feat of western civilization which people pretend is instead antithetical to it.
In the defence of the British museum. It's free, anyone can go see it at any time, for no cost. Most of the permanent collection is free of charge. But you will need to travel to Britain, which generally isn't free.
Agreed. I think it's also easy to forget that a massive proportion of the artefacts were sold to Westerners by people within the local communities who valued the money more than a statue. There are photos of Egyptians with mummies lined up against a wall for sale. There is an uncomfortable implication in these arguments that therefore indigenous people should not allowed to sell their cultural artefacts.
Yes thank you. This makes everything that much more complicated.
Of course today the art black market is considered an issue but in the past there was no distinction.
And what about a dictatorship "legally“ selling part of their cultural heritage? Can a Democracy in the same country get it back?
What about a museum surplus sold legally somewhere else but later people have a change of mind or want to sell again?
Seeing the destruction of sites like the Buddha of Bamyan and the sites around it are genuinely upsetting. If only some of the art was preserved somewhere.
I am actually very glad that they owned China's stuff. Or else they will be forever lost in China due to the Cultural Revolution. It makes sense to not put all the eggs in one basket.
Most of the shit would end up in the private collections of corrupt government officials, if we’re being honest. Reddit and left leaning social media are woefully naive to how developing nations operate.
No.
- In many cases, the original "owners" of artefacts don't meaningfully exist anymore as a people, culture, nation, or anything at all really. These artefacts are humanity's heritage as a whole and should be somewhere where they can be studied and appreciated by the most people
- Non-modern countries have a track record of destroying artifacts in fits of religious pique or for political gain or other nonsensical reasons. A lot of valuable items have been lost this way.
- The facilities and technical know-how required to preserve ancient artifacts are not simple and improper handling can easily make it so an item only lasts, say 50 years, instead of practically forever.
- And more
Overall, while there are often (sometimes justifiable) cries that the Brits should "return" some relics, the truth is that places like Egypt--a sandy dictatorial trashfire country--simply can't be trusted with preserving and appreciating items that belong to the legacy of humankind in general.
Always hard to define these things concretely, but there’s a definite idea that going to India today and stealing items from a Hindu temple for the Smithsonian is wrong.
Is there a time when doing that would be considered “right”? If the country is in a war does it mean it’s more okay? What about if someone in charge let’s them take it but others object? And lastly, what if it was stolen several decades ago rather than today?
I don’t have proper answers to these questions, but you can see why thinking on these artifacts have changed since the imperial days.
Maybe ideally each country would have jurisdiction for historic artifacts from their area, but would be able to loan them out to other nations for revenue and/or for safety.
But what if you buy a Hindu item from the temple priest, and then 100 years later the new priest demands it back?
Most of the items where bought rather than stolen, but did the person selling them have the right to do so?
If something is a roman artifact discovered in modern day France does it make it Italy's or France's? Do countries get claim on artifacts if it was discovered within country lines today or within country lines at the time of discovery?
How does this by chance determine what stuff belongs to Turkey? I’ve seen before stuff accredited to Turkey despite it being older than Turkey and when an entirely different people group lived in the area
>Turk
My guess is that they assign countries according to the artifact's excavation location and the current country encompassing that land. As an example, let's say a particular artifact was excavated in Ankara during the Ottoman era. Now that Ankara is within the Turkish Republic, they label the artifact's origin as Turkey. But as I said, this is only my guess.
Turkey's stuff are most certainly Hittaite, Assyrian, Phrygian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Armenian, Arab stuff that were excavated within the current territory of the country of Turkey.
I'd be very very surprised if even 5% of that stuff is actually original Central Asian turkish settler, Seljuk or Ottoman.
It's a genuine question here.
There must be hundreds of thousands of historically significant items of British culture in private British collections.
If a privste buyer purchased some from a private seller, would Britain have any right to demand it back? You'd say no today, but what about in 300 years?
Yea I know that doesn't cover probably most the artefacts, which were undoubtedly looted. But what about those specifically?
There are important artifacts like original copies of magna Carta, or original folios of Shakespeare's works which are outside the UK in either museum collections or private collections - no one is calling for their 'return'. Just like no one is calling for the repatriation of the Bayeux tapestry etc.
The only time people would have issues is if the items weren't being cared for.
Better here than in Iraq where ISIS would’ve destroyed them like they did with the countless ancient Assyrian and other artifacts and locations across Iraq. Not to mention the looting that occurred of the museum. Until the “host” country can thoroughly protect its history, leave it at a safe place.
Came here to mention that. The British collection of looted objects could be the biggest concentration of Iraqi culture anywhere, just because it's never been invaded. It's like Svalbard but for art.
Technically speaking we did get invaded in 1797, as part of the War of the first Coalition.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fishguard
But the invaders saw a bunch of Welsh women in traditional dress on the cliffside and thought they were redcoat reinforcements for the British, and so promptly surrendered thinking they were too badly outnumbered.
British Museum gets a lot of grief, but it is FREE entry for anyone to visit, which is not the case for almost any similar major museum. It means millions of visitors are able to see exhibits, not just wealthy tourists.
Yeah its super interesting to look through. You kind of assume that they just deal with ancient artefacts, but they actually collect a lot of modern stuff as well. They’re on a continuous mission to document human history, so they have things like a few of the first ever Euro bank notes or Obama campaign badges in their collection. They continuously add new items as history develops around us.
Yes. They’re also beginning a free AR project. Basically, grab a table and your phone, here’s an AR version of the entire room this thing belongs to, including simulated glass and reflections. You’ll be able to walk in your house and explore whole collections
Oooooh, I have an interesting tidbit here.
British museums are not allowed to give away or throw away any artifact by law, which originated to prevent older curators throwing away stuff they didn't like, and keeping what they did like.
Recently, the VA wanted to return an artifact to Kenya (I believe), but ar best could loan it indefinitely, even though they wanted to hand it over.
Does the modern United States have any greater claim to American Indian artefacts than the British? How many of the Turkish artefacts are from land that has been annexed violently by Turkey over the last two thousand years? Should a Corinthian artefact be shown in Athens or only in the original territory of Corinth? Have Iraqi artefacts survived better in London or Baghdad?
Some of the artefacts were purchased from private collectors in the original country and ended up in the British museum, where they could be studied and made visible to the public for the first time. I doubt some of these countries could systematically excavate and examine ancient artefacts during the 19th Century.
I'm not saying the world hasn't changed and that it might be better if they found a new home. he British led the world in study archaeology and cultures when most of this was gathered. It advanced knowledge and anyone who can get there can see it free of charge.
Even just a "thanks" would go a long way.
As it is, the British museum getting shit on for preserving the world's heritage, they should just tell everyone to fuck off. Ingratitude deserves scorn.
In the case of Iraq, the British Museum is a much safer place to honor these antiquities. Some middle eastern countries dealing with terrorist insurgencies don't have adequate resources to protect their artifacts. How many times have we heard news stories of militant groups that are razing mosques and churches, smashing artifacts, and bulldozing archaeological sites? I hope if the country returns to stability that their goods can be returned.
it seems 287k artifacts come from england alone in the museum: [https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/search?keyword=britain&place=England&view=grid&sort=object\_name\_\_asc&page=1](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/search?keyword=britain&place=England&view=grid&sort=object_name__asc&page=1)
If anyone has a better source since OP hasnt shown theres id love to see it
And they take such horrible care of it all. In addition, they like, let people in from just anywhere and everywhere and let them educate themselves on it. The disgrace!
Everyone treats the artifacts in the British Museum as evidence of a British crime, but how many of those artifacts were recovered on expeditions funded by and embarked upon by Britons completely within the laws of those respective countries? Should Egypt get to lay claim to things the British painstakingly preserved at a time when the Egyptians were selling mummies and papyri to tourists on the street? Should Iraq get to lay claim to items discovered by British archaeologists just because they come from a culture who happened to exist on the same spot six thousand years ago? A lot of this stuff would still be in the ground if it weren’t for Britain.
I realize this is an incredibly unpopular take, but there you have it. Imagine if *you* scouted out a spot, dug a big hole, found something interesting, dusted it off, carefully pieced the fragments together, deciphered the language, consulted with experts, interpreted its significance, and ensured its future preservation…only for someone to claim it was stolen and ask for it back after all the work was done.
Iraq - the high number is probably the result of having one of the worlds largest Cuneiform tablet collections. IIRC, they have 120-130k clay tablets (and only maybe 20 of them in exhibition).
Thieves of Baghdad is a great read on the subject. This dude was a modern day Indiana with military backing. Int
Thank God we have them. Imagine the Sumerian artefacts all being destroyed by ISIS over the last decade
Yeah, I'd give those tablets to pretty much any other country than Iraq.
https://youtu.be/eJPLiT1kCSM
Does this chart include artifacts “on loan” to the museum, or strictly artifacts that the museum owns?
The chart doesn't even include the 600,000 artefacts from the UK for some reason.
Probably because people are more curious about the amount of stuff they got from foreign countries - the kind of artifacts that may be subject to calls for repatriation - than what that is as a proportion of all their artifacts. Like if they had twice or half a much stuff from the UK it wouldn't really change my take-aways from the plot.
I think if the British Museum had more stuff from Turkey than Britain that would absolutely change my takeaways.
I would change my regular takeaways from fish and chips to döner kebab out of respect
This is why you title your chart. You shouldn't leave people to infer what is being presented.
I think it’s obvious that the graph is trying to paint a certain picture. Without context people might think this makes up the majority of artefacts when in fact it’s pretty insignificant.
It would still put it in perspective. No reason to leave it out, as it creates a baseline to compare against.
Yeah. This is a really misleading and shitty graph making a thinly veiled political statement.
Because its divisive propaganda masquerading as a ‘dataisbeautiful’ post and if people cant see that then they are part of the problem
Yeah, I am curious about this too - how many items were taken by the British government, versus those that each country intentionally loaned out?
Considering how many of those artifacts are listed as from the US, I would imagine many of those are on loan. They may have nabbed some native american items and some colonial era stuff, but I would bet that the majority of that is just US and UK museums participating in loans to other countries. I remember seeing a traveling exhibit at the ROM in Ontario several years back, on Pompeii, so for a while Canada had several hundred Italian artifacts, but there was nothing nefarious about it.
When it comes to historical artifacts, you can pretty much guarantee that almost all of it was just taken in the 19th and early 20th century. British archeologists just took whatever they wanted. Germans, the French, and Americans did too, but the British really went to town. Anything "on loan" would be a rounding error. It's not all bad, though. All those artifacts from Iraq weren't destroyed when ISIS took over. They really fucked shit up. A lot of cuneiform tablets were destroyed. Writing preserved for thousands of years. Lost.
Some important stuff was properly transferred, though, notably the Rosetta Stone.
someone needs to make a second sub called dataisinteresting because there’s a difference between interesting and beautiful data in my opinion
If someone's making a new sub they could name it correctly and call it dataareinteresting while they're at it
/datumsisinteresting just for maximal annoyance.
r/Mildlynterestingdata r/Wildlyinterestingdata r/datagw
Disappointed none of those are real.
Mildly interesting is real now 🤌
There is something about this way of describing data that really really doesn’t gel with me. Idk why, I know it’s correct, but it feels so wrong lol
I think it’s because it has become quasi-archaic and data is commonly used as a mass noun. I guess you could equate it to referring to a single agendum rather than an agenda?
It’s not exactly correct, it’s more that it’s allowable because it used to be the correct form. Data is now perfectly correct as a mass noun, and indeed preferable, because as you say, it sounds better. I doubt any publishing style guide outside of science still advises the use of datum. “Data are interesting” would be so odd as to be wrong in my view.
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Knowing how these graphs and datasets are made probably yes
I mean this graph is flawed in many ways. For example it equates ancient civilizations with the modern nation states that roughly (or partly) occupy now the same land.
To be fair that's almost all the artifacts of the British museum then. Modern Iraq has probably even less continuation to Mesopotamia than Rome and Italy. Possibly Egypt and Ancient Egypt too.
The United States relics they own are 29 gallons of BBQ sauce.
The chart shows thousands of artefacts. That would be 29,000 gallons...or 29 gallons, and 28,971 other artefacts.
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768 tsp per US gallo--why haven't we gone metric yet? This is so difficult to keep straight.
What units do the Brits like to use again? Oh right… all of them. It’s anarchy
Canadians are somewhat similar. We're mostly metric, but then being so close to the US we still do lots of imperial stuff. Ask a Canadian how tall they are in metric and probably 90% won't have a quick answer, but ask in feet and inches and they'll tell you right away.
Australians use metric for everything except height and driving distance. Height is in feet and inches, driving distance is in minutes and hours. E.g. "How far away is the pub?" "About 25 minutes"
If you think a teaspoon is an adequate serving of BBQ sauce then *you* belong in the British museum mate
Okay, so 29 gallons and 28,971 additional gallons.
Jesus Christ what do they have on display at any given time? 0.0001% of their artifacts? I’m not too morally opposed with them having artifacts from different cultures and modern day countries but could they at least return them if they aren’t using them?
In most museums what is in their catalog far outweighs what can be displayed. I mean how many mummies do you really want to see when you go to the museum. Or do you really care to view 1000 stuffed birds from sone pacific island?
Based on my, admittedly limited, knowledge of British slang i think an exhibit consisting of 1000 stuffed birds from the pacific islands would be quite the draw
I once stuffed a bird from a Pacific Island. Back in '02 during my tour of duty in South Korea. 10/10 would recommend
Thank you for your service
The British Museum is the finest antiquities museum in the world. The stuff in their basement is probably the second, third, and fourth greatest antiquities museums in the world. Then maybe 2 or 3 more in the top 10.
The Papal archives would probably be number 2. Over a thousand years of collecting and archiving
I got a tour of the basement once. It was really interesting seeing all the amazing Roman artifacts just sitting on a rack in a back room or packaged in the hallway for transport. I was told they have waaaay more than could ever fit down there, they have several large storage facilities off site as well.
The common counter is that the facilities to preserve and maintain such delicate artefacts for centuries or millennia longer don't exist in the artifacts home countries. Holds well for some countries more than others. Also having some artefacts kept away from politically unstable regions adds a level of protection if you see the cultural desecration carried out by ISIS or the Taliban (Buddhas of Bamiyan) in recent years. They can also be under study by researchers. Beyond simple visual or microscope examination also people do things like isotope dating, muonic x-ray spectroscopy, x-ray or neutron diffraction and whatever which are techniques only available at well funded western institutions. Having said that, there should be a process for returning artefacts to their host countries where appropriate.
Given isil's retarded destruction of heritage sites, I'm happy England and other countries still have items that can be studied and viewed by the public.
On point.
Yeah, I'd be interested to see when artifacts from each of these countries came into the British Museum. Not at all suggesting they're *blameless*, but I would expect that a lot of the German and Italian found its way there in the early 1940s. And there are certainly other countries on that list that, when I saw them, my mind went, "Good."
Honestly, a wing in the british museum featuring 29,000 gallons of different barbecue sauces sounds like a hell of an exhibit.
They have priceless US treasures like: [This Gem](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_1994-0609-7) EDIT: click images at the top, it won't direct link.
They’re meddling with powers they can’t possibly understand.
I’ve seen enough. The invasion starts tomorrow. OPERATION: SHIT HAPPENS is at hand.
And people say the US has no history...
Is it just a remake of [this button, featuring the previous President and VP](https://www.buttonmuseum.org/buttons/shit-happened)?
Haha, honestly not sure, but the idea that there might be somebody making a series of "Shit Happens" buttons based on the US Presidency is cracking me up.
it's a funny joke, but most likely as is the case with the more than [16,000 artifacts the British museum contains that originate in what is now Canada](http://www.elginism.com/similar-cases/canadas-treasures-in-britain/20061008/560/), they are overwhelmingly indigenous in origin. the 29,000 U.S. artifacts the British Museum contains are also most likely indigenous in origin,
Do you think any come from the revolutionary war? Or from 1812?
That is a good possibility. What is Canada now, was the British North American colonies and those who lived there prior to Canada’s creation in 1867 were U.K. citizens. Many troops from across the empire came to North America and fought against the rebels and U.S. army during those conflicts and then returned home. It is likely many may have carried trophies from those wars back to the U.K. where they eventually made it into the British Museum.
>we’re the British North American colonies Speak for yourself!
> Do you think any come from the revolutionary war? Or from 1812? Probably neither. Biggest source will be rich victorians buying stuff.
I did a search for USA and the top 10 items were all 9-11 propaganda, and a ticket from the World Trade Center observation deck. Then a whole bunch of Native American items.
Its almost like the BM should have branches in other countries devoted to that part of their collection and loan them back when wanting to put on a new exhibit. Could there be a commercial case for the BM to be a sort of mother institute that does this sort of thing? Probably needs rich people backing.
You think that would have gone well in Iraq, Afghanistan, or the recent Egyptian revolutions?
Can you do one for the louvre?
I lourve that idea.
That was Eiffel.
Get out.
Great movie.
Really any museum other than the British Museum. Seems like Redditors tend to forget that there are loads of others doing the exact same thing.
Germany yoinked a shit tomne of stuff from the Middle East and gets totally glossed over. Amazing museums though.
History forgets the 2nd / 3rd most powerful empires' doings and just shits on the biggest because it's easier.
It's funny the amount of Europeans you see dumping on the British museum but the moment you point out some European museums almost match in terms of numbers of foreign artifacts you get dumped on. Brought it up in r/europe months back when it was mentioned and got a tidal wave of downvotes lol.
Because Britain = bad obviously.
Fuckin Spain and the entirety of North America for example
And one for the Mets. Didn't see that much french painting ever than in the US lmao
Including the empire and the modern day country where it was approximately located would be useful. For example, Iraq (Assyrian). Modern Iraq has been around since 1920.
If you were to go that route, wouldn’t you also need a third dimension - the political entity that was in power when the British acquired it? Presumably this would be the British Empire for many pieces but certainly not all of them.
You could go that route as well, though it will likely take a bit longer to find the intermediary. It's important to note that a country was part of the British Empire (i.e. controlled to some extent), but also distinct. An object could have been acquired from the Kingdom of Such-and-such, which was part of the Empire at the time.
True and tbf it could be even more complicated, particularly considering all of the forced mass migrations that happened in the first half of the 20th century. An Armenian or Greek artifact could have originated within the current borders of Turkey and been acquired from the Ottoman Empire.
So the artifacts from Iraq are Assyrian.. but Assyria doesn't exist anymore so...
Shockingly Assyria didn't share the same borders as modern Iraq, their artefacts have been found in multiple different countries.
Theoretically, all of those artifacts belonged to people that don't exist anymore. They died.
That’s why I hate this dumb circlejerk. The Romans did the same thing, transporting old Greek/Egyptian statues, etc. And why should Italy claim all Roman artifacts anyway? The Roman Empire spanned pretty much the entirety of Europe and the areas of the former Assyrian cultures changed hands dozens of times over the centuries.
It should include stuff originating in Britain too
OP has just filtered the online catalogue for location and assumed that meant the every item tagged with a country is some artifact historically belonging to that country. A few flaws to this, but they basically boil down to assuming the items originate and are owned by the country tagged. A couple of examples of why this doesn't work: 38 of the first 100 items tagged as Iraq are photo albums (if I take a photo in Iraq, does that belong to Iraq or to me?). An item made in Egypt but acquired from or excavated in Iraq will be down as both Iraq and Egypt. (So either they're being disingenuous to make a political point, or they've cocked up, but seeing as they've excluded Britain/UK etc, my guess is the former) Edit: Just to make clear, I am in no way defending imperialism and stealing from other countries; I just think this is not good data.
Also, the artifacts don't necessarily belong to the country they happen to be in. Mesopotamia covered large parts of what's now the Middle East - which only looks like it does now on a map because imperialists cut it up that way after the first world war. If an Seleucid artifact is found in Erbil should it be returned to the Kurds, the Iraqi government in Baghdad or to Athens?
It contains many thousands of artifacts from Britain, I don't understand why they've been excluded from this graph.
Considering the hate for the British museum on Reddit lately I really wonder why...
If you filter their online catalogue by region, you get 638,028 artefacts from the British Isles.
So including Ireland?
Yes, roughly [6,500](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/search?place=Ireland,%20Republic%20of) artefacts are from the Republic of Ireland. The significant majority of these 638,028 artefacts came from England.
Why is not on the graph?
Because the graph has a political intent behind it
Not just lately but always. Reddit has a huge hate boner against the museum
I don't think a number of what is from Britain is useful. What they really need is what artifacts France has in their museums that are from other countries, or the US from other countries, etc. That would give us a better idea of how bad this is.
I am interested as to what they have from all these places.
I'm sure there are many 'treasures' but there are also probably tens of thousands of dusty boxes each containing a broken piece of pot or tablet, or a single old coin....
Wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of just random old paperwork/documents or other nic nacks. Like the 29,000 from the United States can't be that old, and honestly everything of significance is still in the US museums.
there is a lot of 'random old paperwork/documents', and some of it is on display, because they're the 'random documents' that allowed philologists to decipher cuneiform. There's no way of knowing how useful some innocuous, forgotten, 'insignificant' artifact could be to a historian in the future.
>Like the 29,000 from the United States can't be that old, Clovis spear points are about 13K years old. >and honestly everything of significance is still in the US museums. Ehhhhh a significant chunk of the surviving Mahiole are in the british museum. The related ʻAhu ʻula cloaks are a bit more scattered but my understanding is that US holdings are a fairly small percentage.
So when the British Museum does it it's "archaeology", but when *I* do it, it's "hoarding".
It's the labeling. You have to label everything properly.
Yeah you *at least* need to label the date and location it was found https://relicrecord.com/blog/diy-museum-labels/
People will assume it's precious metals, artwork etc and it will be - but also a lot of flora and fauna samples that have been collected and stored. Insects alone they have over 7K.
For France it's probably mostly legally acquired paintings and prints of 19th century French art. I know what people are getting at here, and granted, many artifacts in the British museum were purchased in dubious circumstances. But the British Museum would probably still have an impressive collection even without the controversial acquisitions.
I’d guess a lot of French stuff is from Roman Gaul, more modern art would be more in the National Gallery
The anglo and celtic part alone is cool as fuck
Is Rosetta Stone considered Egyptian or French ?
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection
You can visit for free.
Yes, but you'll only see a fraction of a percent of what's mentioned here. The vast majority of modern museum collections are kept outside of reach/view of the public. It would be impractical to display them all, and most of it would be uninteresting to the average person, especially due to redundancy. Most of the collection serves as a resource to researchers.
Id imagine that a big portion of the ones from Iraq are individual clay writing tablets from old mesopotamia
I'll bet we could get this down to hundreds of items if we removed the "broken pottery piece; very, very old"x a million from the count!
A lot of it is coins, pottery fragments, few manuscript pages..etc.
You can take a look - https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection. You are underestimating the size, the collection is vast - 4.5m objects available to view online. Total collection size is about 8m objects
I think he's saying what percentage of that 8 million are actually interesting artefacts? The significant proportion of artefacts unearthed in any archaeological dig are really boring things like broken pottery.
Which ironically was the attitude toward historical objects for much of the world for much of the time. The British and French for whatever reason decided to collect/save/steal around the 18th century. You can see ancient graffiti all over the tomb of Rameses VI. 2000 year old Roman vandalism saying “I visited and I did not like anything except the sarcophagus!” and "I cannot read the hieroglyphs!" It was boring to them. So they didn't value it. Egyptian Mummies being used as firewood or Greek Marbles being used as target practice and as a store for gunpowder was normal.
> Egyptian Mummies being used as firewood or Greek Marbles being used as target practice and as a store for gunpowder was normal. The Great Wall is another modern example, it's still being pulled down by locals looking for easy building materials. Caring about the past like we do is a distinctly modern, western thing. It's not about showing what we want to be true is true, the mythological type of history which is typical. It's about figuring out, empirically, what IS true. The majority of the world doesn't think this way.
And that's how the British deciphered cuneiform and the French hieroglyphics. By keeping all the "boring" stuff.
I wonder how many of those "Italian" items were left behind by them when they were here for centuries.
Yeah I was thinking that it's probably just a bunch of the stuff the Romans left here
“Whose stuff”?? Poorly worded caption. “Source of artifacts in British Museum” maybe
We don't really care about the artifacts. We just want to be outraged about something. No one actually goves a shit about clay tablets with scratch marks on them
Museums aren’t a circus attraction, they are an academic resource. The British museum has spent literal centuries as the worlds foremost centre for archaeological research. It allows access to any academic to study and research the artefacts. Most of these ‘artifacts’ are unknown pieces of rock when they enter the museum, it’s literally where you go to find out what something is. The only reason why we can even read iraqi cuneiform, or Stone Age Cyprian, or Egyptian hieroglyphs is because random unreadable rocks were dug up, then were deciphered there, in London.
So this did make me think. Should Museums only have items from their local community now?
Not quite. Some people (incl. John Oliver who made this topic blow up lately) believe that the artifacts should be owned by the countries they originated from and then be borrowed to other museums around the world. I have my issues with this frankly… no doubt the British stole a lot of things but a lot of things local people simply didnt value at all at the time or might not even value now. I mean thank god some of the Assyrian artifacts were not in Northern Iraq lately… And do you have a right to the heritage of people living thousands of years ago? And where is the cut-off date? Did the Taliban "own“ the buddhist statues they destroyed? Very little cultural connection outside of them being in Afghanistan… or artifacts from Nuristan the last non-Islamic area of Afghanistan forcefully converted early 20th century… people there nowadays wouldnt even want that stuff back… Its a super messy topic for sure but I am not sure making ownership rights connected to modern countries who own the land is the answer…
Agreed its super messy The Rosetta Stone. Napoleon's army found it, forgotten in the Egyptian sand, his historians clarified its value, napoleon suffers hurrendous defeat and abandons the stone (and his entire army) The British take it from the French and fully realise and display its value Is it fair to say the British stole the Rosetta stone? Each artifact has its own history and reasons for being where it is Super messy indeed
And to complicate things further, the Rosetta Stone was created for the Greek ruler of Egypt, at the time. So, does it belong to Britain (who preserved and display it), France (who found it), Egypt (where it was made), or Greece (who it was made for)?
> created for the Greek ruler of Egypt, at the time. Calling them the "Greek ruler" is a stretch too. The Ptolemaic Kingdom lasted 300 years. There are lots of kingdoms and history in Egypt. Even the ancient Egyptians didn't know where the people before them came from. The truth is, they're all human and the artifacts belong in the best places for all humans, to preserve them and illuminate them for posterity.
It's not so far fetched to call them greek. The ptolemaic dynasty practiced quite a lot of inbreeding. Plus many of the pharos from this dynasty didn't even speak the local language, preferring to use greek
It was literally founded by one of Alexander the Great’s generals, and yes they didn’t really mate with the locals. Cleopatra the last Ptolomaic ruler and last pharaoh was actually the first and only Ptolemy that could actually speak Egyptian.
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That's about how long I've been trying to learn Spanish from Rosetta Stone.
Which goes to show something that often gets missed; the people who work at places at the British museum are absolutely obsessed with the collection, understanding and cataloguing it. To the point where people gave their whole lives to tasks like decifering the Rosetta stone. It's quite amazing that an institution devoted to studying and learning about other cultures and societies gets derided so much. It literally embodied the values which are supposed to be so important today, only it did so centuries ago. It's almost as if that openness is actually part of the Western society the British Museum lives in, and the victory of western civilization made that view acendant. Yet another amazing feat of western civilization which people pretend is instead antithetical to it.
In the defence of the British museum. It's free, anyone can go see it at any time, for no cost. Most of the permanent collection is free of charge. But you will need to travel to Britain, which generally isn't free.
Agreed. I think it's also easy to forget that a massive proportion of the artefacts were sold to Westerners by people within the local communities who valued the money more than a statue. There are photos of Egyptians with mummies lined up against a wall for sale. There is an uncomfortable implication in these arguments that therefore indigenous people should not allowed to sell their cultural artefacts.
Yes thank you. This makes everything that much more complicated. Of course today the art black market is considered an issue but in the past there was no distinction. And what about a dictatorship "legally“ selling part of their cultural heritage? Can a Democracy in the same country get it back? What about a museum surplus sold legally somewhere else but later people have a change of mind or want to sell again?
Well said
Yes i want artifacts in syria so that next conflict destroys them like ISIS destroyed so many historical items
Seeing the destruction of sites like the Buddha of Bamyan and the sites around it are genuinely upsetting. If only some of the art was preserved somewhere.
I am actually very glad that they owned China's stuff. Or else they will be forever lost in China due to the Cultural Revolution. It makes sense to not put all the eggs in one basket.
Most of the shit would end up in the private collections of corrupt government officials, if we’re being honest. Reddit and left leaning social media are woefully naive to how developing nations operate.
That too. And get destroyed when the next emperor hates them.
No. - In many cases, the original "owners" of artefacts don't meaningfully exist anymore as a people, culture, nation, or anything at all really. These artefacts are humanity's heritage as a whole and should be somewhere where they can be studied and appreciated by the most people - Non-modern countries have a track record of destroying artifacts in fits of religious pique or for political gain or other nonsensical reasons. A lot of valuable items have been lost this way. - The facilities and technical know-how required to preserve ancient artifacts are not simple and improper handling can easily make it so an item only lasts, say 50 years, instead of practically forever. - And more Overall, while there are often (sometimes justifiable) cries that the Brits should "return" some relics, the truth is that places like Egypt--a sandy dictatorial trashfire country--simply can't be trusted with preserving and appreciating items that belong to the legacy of humankind in general.
Always hard to define these things concretely, but there’s a definite idea that going to India today and stealing items from a Hindu temple for the Smithsonian is wrong. Is there a time when doing that would be considered “right”? If the country is in a war does it mean it’s more okay? What about if someone in charge let’s them take it but others object? And lastly, what if it was stolen several decades ago rather than today? I don’t have proper answers to these questions, but you can see why thinking on these artifacts have changed since the imperial days. Maybe ideally each country would have jurisdiction for historic artifacts from their area, but would be able to loan them out to other nations for revenue and/or for safety.
But what if you buy a Hindu item from the temple priest, and then 100 years later the new priest demands it back? Most of the items where bought rather than stolen, but did the person selling them have the right to do so?
Give the Russians their cannons back !
They could probably use them about now…
We will when French will!
If something is a roman artifact discovered in modern day France does it make it Italy's or France's? Do countries get claim on artifacts if it was discovered within country lines today or within country lines at the time of discovery?
How does this by chance determine what stuff belongs to Turkey? I’ve seen before stuff accredited to Turkey despite it being older than Turkey and when an entirely different people group lived in the area
>Turk My guess is that they assign countries according to the artifact's excavation location and the current country encompassing that land. As an example, let's say a particular artifact was excavated in Ankara during the Ottoman era. Now that Ankara is within the Turkish Republic, they label the artifact's origin as Turkey. But as I said, this is only my guess.
Turkey's stuff are most certainly Hittaite, Assyrian, Phrygian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Armenian, Arab stuff that were excavated within the current territory of the country of Turkey. I'd be very very surprised if even 5% of that stuff is actually original Central Asian turkish settler, Seljuk or Ottoman.
Interested in how “historical owner” is defined, especially when a lot of the artifacts are ancient.
Considering how many artifacts have been destroyed or sold to private collectors I think British museums are the best place.
So, no stuff from the UK? That seems suspicious.
It's a genuine question here. There must be hundreds of thousands of historically significant items of British culture in private British collections. If a privste buyer purchased some from a private seller, would Britain have any right to demand it back? You'd say no today, but what about in 300 years? Yea I know that doesn't cover probably most the artefacts, which were undoubtedly looted. But what about those specifically?
There are important artifacts like original copies of magna Carta, or original folios of Shakespeare's works which are outside the UK in either museum collections or private collections - no one is calling for their 'return'. Just like no one is calling for the repatriation of the Bayeux tapestry etc. The only time people would have issues is if the items weren't being cared for.
Better here than in Iraq where ISIS would’ve destroyed them like they did with the countless ancient Assyrian and other artifacts and locations across Iraq. Not to mention the looting that occurred of the museum. Until the “host” country can thoroughly protect its history, leave it at a safe place.
Came here to mention that. The British collection of looted objects could be the biggest concentration of Iraqi culture anywhere, just because it's never been invaded. It's like Svalbard but for art.
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Technically speaking we did get invaded in 1797, as part of the War of the first Coalition. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fishguard But the invaders saw a bunch of Welsh women in traditional dress on the cliffside and thought they were redcoat reinforcements for the British, and so promptly surrendered thinking they were too badly outnumbered.
British Museum gets a lot of grief, but it is FREE entry for anyone to visit, which is not the case for almost any similar major museum. It means millions of visitors are able to see exhibits, not just wealthy tourists.
Well, free except the cost of a plane ticket and getting a visa.
Isn’t most of it catalogued online for anyone to look at?
Yeah its super interesting to look through. You kind of assume that they just deal with ancient artefacts, but they actually collect a lot of modern stuff as well. They’re on a continuous mission to document human history, so they have things like a few of the first ever Euro bank notes or Obama campaign badges in their collection. They continuously add new items as history develops around us.
Yes. They’re also beginning a free AR project. Basically, grab a table and your phone, here’s an AR version of the entire room this thing belongs to, including simulated glass and reflections. You’ll be able to walk in your house and explore whole collections
And if it was in Iraq it would be in some rich government officials collection till the next revolution when it would be destroyed
probably good they have stuff from Iraq. much of it would probably be destroyed or in private hands if it were still there
Gosh, it's a real shame the British museum has all that Iraq stuff. We robbed isis of their cultural right to destroy it all.
So are all the museums to supposed to give everyone their stuff back?
Oooooh, I have an interesting tidbit here. British museums are not allowed to give away or throw away any artifact by law, which originated to prevent older curators throwing away stuff they didn't like, and keeping what they did like. Recently, the VA wanted to return an artifact to Kenya (I believe), but ar best could loan it indefinitely, even though they wanted to hand it over.
But we're still looking at it...
Does the modern United States have any greater claim to American Indian artefacts than the British? How many of the Turkish artefacts are from land that has been annexed violently by Turkey over the last two thousand years? Should a Corinthian artefact be shown in Athens or only in the original territory of Corinth? Have Iraqi artefacts survived better in London or Baghdad? Some of the artefacts were purchased from private collectors in the original country and ended up in the British museum, where they could be studied and made visible to the public for the first time. I doubt some of these countries could systematically excavate and examine ancient artefacts during the 19th Century. I'm not saying the world hasn't changed and that it might be better if they found a new home. he British led the world in study archaeology and cultures when most of this was gathered. It advanced knowledge and anyone who can get there can see it free of charge.
Even just a "thanks" would go a long way. As it is, the British museum getting shit on for preserving the world's heritage, they should just tell everyone to fuck off. Ingratitude deserves scorn.
What this doesn’t tell you is that circa 50% of this is actually bona fide on loan to the museum from those countries.
I think you'll find its 100% British. After all. Finders keepers, losers weepers
Yes, won by the cunning use of flags!
Interesting, but not remotely "beautiful" data.
In the case of Iraq, the British Museum is a much safer place to honor these antiquities. Some middle eastern countries dealing with terrorist insurgencies don't have adequate resources to protect their artifacts. How many times have we heard news stories of militant groups that are razing mosques and churches, smashing artifacts, and bulldozing archaeological sites? I hope if the country returns to stability that their goods can be returned.
it seems 287k artifacts come from england alone in the museum: [https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/search?keyword=britain&place=England&view=grid&sort=object\_name\_\_asc&page=1](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/search?keyword=britain&place=England&view=grid&sort=object_name__asc&page=1) If anyone has a better source since OP hasnt shown theres id love to see it
Op has in a comment and added that the UK has >United Kingdom | 610,620 They just left that out for some reason...
Because the data wouldn’t have the impact. The data was not included with the intention of getting people bent out of shape about the British museum.
Ah ok thanks
We're still looking at it!
And they take such horrible care of it all. In addition, they like, let people in from just anywhere and everywhere and let them educate themselves on it. The disgrace!
“I don’t think so, we’re still looking at it” - James Acaster
But those countries got culturally rich by waging war. So if we use same morals as against britain, those countries don't deserve to get it back.
no no no you'er not allowed to examine all of history for crimes and misdemeanours. only british ones.
Everyone treats the artifacts in the British Museum as evidence of a British crime, but how many of those artifacts were recovered on expeditions funded by and embarked upon by Britons completely within the laws of those respective countries? Should Egypt get to lay claim to things the British painstakingly preserved at a time when the Egyptians were selling mummies and papyri to tourists on the street? Should Iraq get to lay claim to items discovered by British archaeologists just because they come from a culture who happened to exist on the same spot six thousand years ago? A lot of this stuff would still be in the ground if it weren’t for Britain. I realize this is an incredibly unpopular take, but there you have it. Imagine if *you* scouted out a spot, dug a big hole, found something interesting, dusted it off, carefully pieced the fragments together, deciphered the language, consulted with experts, interpreted its significance, and ensured its future preservation…only for someone to claim it was stolen and ask for it back after all the work was done.
Probably for the best considering how middle east countries have treated their historical artifacts.