Give it Back! The Ethics of Repatriation

Give it Back! The Ethics of Repatriation

Lord Elgin used saws to hack off the famous Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon to move them to Britain. Giovani Belzoni , in the early 19^th century, took more artifacts from Egypt than  Napoleon’s armies did.

Today most governments have laws that prevent these activities from taking place. To keep artifacts from leaving their country, and encourage their return,governments have designed antiquities laws to curtail exports and regulate the way archaeology is done. It is also common for governments now to ask foreign museums to repatriate artifacts that have already been taken.

In these laws artifacts cannot be exported from the country without special permission-something that is rarely given. Digs must be approved and monitored by a government authority, such as the Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA) . The people who conduct digs or investigations must have the proper qualifications, such as a PhD in archaeology.

They must also report their findings to the state and turn over artifacts that are found.

In their laws China,Greece and Egypt make clear that artifacts found at a dig site are property of the state, regardless of whether they are found on private property.

Even with the absence of antiquity laws archaeologists are encouraged to follow certain ethical beliefs : record site diligently, report all findings, publish as much as possible, don’t sell or steal artifacts, don’t publicly release information that will help looters, and so on. These are all principles that are taught in archaeology schools from Cambridge to Tokyo. Any student today who suggests dynamite as an excavation method would likely get a failing grade.

Callback

There are numerous attempts by countries to reclaim artifacts that were taken out in earlier times. Greece wants the Elgin Marbles back, Ethiopia got the Obelisk of Axum back in 2005 and Egypt wants several of its treasures back including the Rosetta Stone and the bust of Nefertiti.

This is only the tip of the iceberg of requests to return antiquities. There are several arguments made for repatriating artifacts. Sometimes there is a legal argument or an ethical one. Even in cases where permission is granted , sometimes it was by a government that was not representative of the people. For example permission for the removal of the Elgin Marbles was granted by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire , who forcibly ruled over Greece at the time.

The strongest argument is nationalistic; antiquities are the property of the people if the country of origin and should be recallable by the state. James Cuno ,the president of the Art Institute of Chicago ,disagrees by saying that artifacts “are the cultural property of all humankind…evidence of the world’s ancient past and not that of a particular modern nation, they comprise antiquity , and antiquity knows no borders.

Other arguments include claims that permission was granted by the proper authority, as is occasionally put forward by opponents to the return of the Elgin Marbles , and the general claim that if every museum repatriated all their artifacts they would have little left to exhibit.

The priceless artifacts of antiquity may have been taken recklessly in the first instance, but their repatriation will be a hotly -debated and lengthy process indeed.