Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq
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Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq
#2Auction houses have some very shady practices sometimes, and I imagine it's very difficult for buyers to navigate what is legal and what's not - but also in this case, it kind of seems like maybe they should have known.
Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq
#3This is a related and surprisingly fascinating article about the cast of characters involved in many of the missteps of the Green Collection (which became the Museum of the Bible):
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/museum-...
Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq
#4take that, L. Bob Rife.
(the similarities between hobby lobby stealing tablets and religiously motivated tech magnates doing the same in a certain cyberpunk book of wide repute are, as usual, a bit eerie)
Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq
#5>"Whenever looted cultural property is found in this country, the United States government will do all it can to preserve heritage by returning such artifacts where they belong"
So what is the definition of "looted" here? Museums are full of things that fit various definitions of that word.
Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq
#6Auction houses have some very shady practices sometimes, and I imagine it's very difficult for buyers to navigate what is legal and what's not - but also in this case, it kind of seems like maybe they should have known.
They knew. Their own expert lawyer warned them in 2010. It's also their MO apparently. A second case involves Egyptian papyri. They also mis-declare things to get them into the country (ie calling them "tiles" in customs declarations). So, lying and stealing.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/nyregion/hobby-lobby-arti...
2. https://www.thedailybeast.com/hobby-lobby-scandal-widens-as-...
3. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jan/09/a-scandal-in-ox...
Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq
#7> Hobby Lobby bought the tablet in a private sale, after a Hobby Lobby representative viewed the tablet in London. The auction house shipped the tablet to its New York office and, from there, hand-carried it to Hobby Lobby's headquarters in Oklahoma City, "so that Hobby Lobby could avoid incurring a New York sales tax," according to prosecutors.
Oy vey. I don't know how serious this is but it's not a great look. Is this kind of thing common in the art world?
I find old clay tablets, and ancient writings in general, absolutely fascinating - particularly the randomness of the information that we can get from them. The oldest person whose name we know is from a signature on a receipt for some oil or some other merchandise.[1] It's slightly incredible when you realize that you have no idea who the ruler at the time was, or what he (or she did) but you can pinpoint precisely which goods exchanged hands on a specific date.
Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq
#8One of the outcomes of the US-Iraq war was Iraq's national heritage of antiquities getting plundered and sold illegally.[1]
The burning of the Library of Alexandria is a potent symbol in Western culture, but the world has repeatedly suffered massive losses of cultural and historical artifacts in the last few decades. The public quickly develops historical amnesia for recent events. Compare, for example, the loss of Brazil's National Museum to a fire two years ago.[2]
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/ir...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/fire-engulfs-b...
edited: clarity and link formatting
Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq
#9>"Whenever looted cultural property is found in this country, the United States government will do all it can to preserve heritage by returning such artifacts where they belong" So what is the definition of "looted" here? Museums are full of things that fit various definitions of that word.
Essentially, if it happened in modern times we have to account to modern governments for it. It's just a property of current real life. If local people put pressure on their government over it, the government has to put pressure on America over it, and America may want to preserve relations by making a gesture that's ultimately strategically zero cost to preserve a strategic relationship.
No one with any power seriously wants the Kohinoor back so it's not going to go back. But having an artifact taken from your country during a war of invasion is going to create lots of pressure on you.
It's just realpolitik.
Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq
#10> "Whenever looted cultural property is found in this country, the United States government will do all it can to preserve heritage by returning such artifacts where they belong,"
How does this tablet differ from any other artifact in a museum? Couldn't it be argued that any ancient artifact from another culture is stolen?