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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

#251

Post by billfruit »

billfruit wrote: post #218
Amezarak wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes across a little patronizing. The poster is making the point that North Africa had been part of a civilized empire for centuries, and full of wealthy cities, some famous for their learning. Some of history’s greatest minds lived in Roman North Africa. These cities were conquered. Some were sacked and destroyed. There was major loss of life, economic destruction, and loss of property, including written works…

Much of Roman Africa was in a state of deterioration due to Christan invaders like Visigoths(I think) who overrun the Roman African provinces towards the decline of the Western Roman Empire. At the time of the expansion of Islam, there was no longer even a Western Roman Empire.

I should have said Vandals instead of Visigoths. The Vandals ruled over Africa during and after the end of the Western Roman Empire.

Later in one of the most dashing military campaigns, the Eastern Roman Empire(Byzantines) forces under Belisarius captured most of the territory of the former Western Roman Empire, including the African provinces after defeating Vandals. The African provinces were then organized into the Exarchate, which is what Muslim armies eventually overcame in the 690s AD.

Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq

#252

Post by woodrowbarlow »

ctdonath wrote: post #131

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…

>Interesting how few are interested in the defense that Hobby Lobby was a victim.

hobby lobby is family owned and the family uses the company as a piggy bank for their museum of the bible. they have had multiple scandals involving counterfeits and artifacts of undocumented provenance over the last ten years. their negligence is beyond doubt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_Lobby_smuggling_scandal

Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq

#253

Post by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 »

Larrikin wrote: post #184
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I like hobby lobby because it’s one of the few places I can get good craft supplies for my kids, I suppose that’s why I “shilled” for them here (your words).

Besides, I think the negative sentiment towards them is obviously politically driven, and not some genuine concern for artifact provenance and ownership.

Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq

#254

Post by nemo »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #207
nemo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your understanding of the region is not an accurate account. Not at all. There have been various sophisticated civilizations in the region, among them various Islamic states. The rises and falls of various sophisticated civilizations came about for a variety of reasons, most of which were prior to the Islamic world existing. The Islamic Golden Age brought Alexandria back from being a declining backwater with its scho…

you studied classics in grad school but you should have also studied debate. As it is abundantly clear to the posters before me and those who replied above, no one except you contended that the islamic golden age did not exiat. What your classics academia instruction seems to have short changed you is in the entire period of history where arab conquest reduced most mesopotamian and north african development to rubble…

>As it is abundantly clear to the posters before me and those who replied above, no one except you contended that the islamic golden age did not exiat.

Happily since I was a philosophy undergrad, I am easily able to spot a straw man. The claim was that the Arab Conquest transformed N Africa from a wealthy region to a backwater. This is was really what I was more responding to. During the Arab Golden Age N. Africa was far more prosperous than during the collapse of late Western Rome. If you learned about the history of the region you could discover how inaccurate the premise is as well as the conclusion. Anyway, this conversation ended yesterday so research if you'd like to learn, but I'm out.

Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq

#255

Post by boomboomsubban »

mcv wrote: post #222
boomboomsubban wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Interesting how few are interested in the defense that Hobby Lobby was a victim. They weren't. With this tablet, maybe they never had any solid reason to suspect it had been looted. This wasn't the only artifact they bought, other items had no documentation detailing their history and they made purchases after being warned that items were likely illegal. It's doubtful they tried very hard to verify this tablets hist…

Why are such auctions even allowed? Or was this an illegal auction? It seems to me that any respectable auction house has an obligation to ensure that their service is not abused to fence stolen goods.

It wasn't auctioned as the owner said the provenance would not pass public scrutiny, but instead listed for private sale. I have no clue how the legality of that works in Britain, but Christies exists to allow rich people to show off who is richer. I wouldn't trust their moral character.

Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq

#256

Post by daseiner1 »

michaelscott wrote: post #225
luckydata wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

close, I'm Italian.

Not that close

actually not close at all, if dude is really trying to be Mr. Ancient Rome, well, he’s likelier descended from the “savages” that sacked her than the ancient patricians who led her in glory

Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq

#257

Post by daseiner1 »

thefounder wrote: post #95
deathgrips wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> the Muslim world had plumbing, water filtration, surgery, advanced mathematics, and many more amazing scientific advance I wonder, why did they get stuck into the past still being ruled either by a monarch or some religious leader?

resource curse, and all of its knock-on effects: ripe targets for resource extraction by foreign governments or multinationals (e.g. the offshoots of Standard Oil), said foreign entities will then support governments that abet their wealth extraction, which are typically governments whose mandate is not based on the will of the people even idealistically. said governments will return a portion of resource revenue to the people in the form of bread and circuses, to distract from how poorly their leaders serve them. saudi arabia had no taxes until only recently – if people are taxed, they’re likelier to be more critical of their government, and to demand representation https://www.ictd.ac/blog/tax-accountability-strengthen-links...

Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq

#258

Post by daseiner1 »

lopmotr wrote: post #206
legerdemain wrote: post #8

One 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 B…

Something 1000s of years old hardly belongs to any particular modern country. Perhaps if whoever is looking after it can't protect it from theft, they don't deserve to be looking after it and it's better that it got stolen. If an entire country is too weak to protect artifacts, then they should be given to somewhere that has that capability. Who would want to return artifacts to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan just be…

so you feel the same about the elgin marbles, presumably? because i absolutely adored seeing them at the British Museum, but it sorta feels to me like they ought to be returned to Athens

Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq

#259

Post by Andrex »

MH15 wrote: post #247

"The United States of America v. Approximately Four Hundred Fifty (450) Ancient Cuneiform Tablets" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_Lobby_smuggling_scandal

One of my favorite random Wikipedia finds:

"United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Approximately...

In rem cases have fun titles in general. :D

Re: Authorities say Hobby Lobby's Gilgamesh tablet is stolen, must go back to Iraq

#260

Post by nemo »

harimau777 wrote: post #242
nemo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For sake of argument, I think that the difference may be that if an artifact is stolen can be recovered. It may even continue to be available to researchers and the general public if it is stollen to be placed in a museum. It is a much different scenario if an artifact is destroyed either intentionally or unintentionally.

The question of whether a returned article would be destroyed is something to consider, though the notion that this would happen in Iraq and Syria assumes something like another US invasion which caused the destruction and looting in Iraq and Syria the first place. Americans (or others in the Coalition of the Willing) arguing we should keep stolen antiquities because in the future we might destabilize the places we're returning stolen goods to so badly they could be destroyed sounds a little like a threat.

I'm not at all comfortable with the idea that Americans shouldn't return stolen antiquities because America might destabilize the region of the original owner again so badly it could be destroyed.

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