241–250 of 283 posts
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Half of the friezes had been destroyed or severely damaged by the time Elgin went there. Some of the remaining pieces have been damaged since he went. The building originally had four walls and a roof.
Yes. And since the Greeks still have many of the acropolis marbles in their museum, it's fatuous to assume that they couldn't protect their own heritage.
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Given the region's susceptibility to Islamic State uprisings, I'm not convinced Iraq and Syria are going to be good stewards of antiquities in the long-run. [1][2] These areas haven't been stable for decades. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_cultural_herita... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Mosul_Museum_ar...
It's worth thinking through the question of whether Iraq or Syria would not be entitled to see stolen property returned due to destabilization. Right now the possessor of the stolen property is an American who also has trafficked in a number of items which were looted in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq (this particular tablet was stolen earlier). Art theft is a real issue in the US and Europe. If an art thie…
It is a much different scenario if an artifact is destroyed either intentionally or unintentionally.
> 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 t…
> 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? Sure. The British museum used to be fairly brazen about the fact that they'd loot less-developed countries for cultural artifacts. Who do you think used to sponsor archaeology expeditions? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Museum#Controversies
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Do you want to take a wager of how many times Christie’s is wrong regarding provenance for multimillion dollar historical items? Not bad for hobby lobby, damned if they do and dammed if they don’t.
What's the end game of shilling for hobby lobby? Flagging negative news of various governments I get like 共匪, huge corporations do it far less, but hobby lobby seems like such a weird company to engage in astroturfing. They played a minor role in past administrations but they seem like even smaller potatoes lately.
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What a tragedy. Most westerners don't realize that when Europeans were living in mud huts and emptying their chamber pots into the streets, the Muslim world had plumbing, water filtration, surgery, advanced mathematics, and many more amazing scientific advances which quickly spread throughout Muslim countries due to the cultural exchange at Mecca. I wonder what the world could have been like if the Mongols had never…
Ehm, plumbing is a bad example since the Romans did that WAY ahead of the Muslim world. For that AND sidewalks, you're welcome. Thanks for the numbers, that was handy.
Found Augustus Caesar's hn account.
(Though, obviously the Romans were far from the first to do this; evidence of some sort of sewerage apparatus goes back at least 6000 years, and the Minoans had an urban system long before Rome existed)
NYTimes: "In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, Hobby Lobby accused the auction house Christie’s of “deceitful and fraudulent conduct” in connection with an ancient tablet bearing a fragment of Gilgamesh. The suit claims “fraud and breach of express and implied warrant” in connection with the tablet, and seeks the return of what it paid for the tablet. In a statement on Tuesday, Christie’s said the lawsuit was related to an…
Is it particularly credible? Like, this is a notoriously dodgy field where it's really up to the purchaser to do due diligence.
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This to me is the most egregious part: > [...] authorities said it bought thousands of artifacts that had been smuggled out of Iraq. Some of the items on display at the Museum of the Bible had been looted from previously unknown archaeological sites. Breathtakingly unethical.
...assuming that they knew they were looted. You could make a case that, yes of course these items were looted, and they turned a blind eye to that. But you could also make a case that they trusted a 3rd party to validate the artifacts. Don't forget this is the group that voluntarily funded research that eventually proved some of their most prized possessions were, in fact, forgeries[0], so we have to assume they hav…
Given the nature of the business, that would have been breathtakingly naive of them. There's a certain point at which naivety isn't credible.
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Except the auction house is next door to a well known car thief's garage, the news is full of stories about a string of car thefts, and someone tells you those cars are probably stolen making it crime to buy.
Do you want to take a wager of how many times Christie’s is wrong regarding provenance for multimillion dollar historical items? Not bad for hobby lobby, damned if they do and dammed if they don’t.
About a third of the time. That's why modern paintings are more valuable than older ones.
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You cannot steal someone else's property even if you rightly believe that the owner wouldn't treat it very well. The same holds between civilized countries, of course. It is obvious that the people who think otherwise employ double moral standards and would never agree to the theft of their country's cultural heritage under similar conditions.
We take peoples kids when they wouldn't be treated well.