r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/nweeeera • 3d ago
Every stolen artifact needs to come back to its land. Video
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u/aaron65776 3d ago edited 3d ago
Im british and went to a tour to egypt. I was the only british person and it was pretty awkward when the tour guide started explaining how many egyptian artifacts we have in the british museum…
Edit: y’all are taking this REALLY seriously 💀💀
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u/nittun 3d ago
"why did i come all this way just to get an inventory of whats back home?"
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u/pickyourteethup 3d ago
Just checking if we missed anything innit.
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u/shotq80 3d ago
We missed the pyramids
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u/alghiorso 3d ago
I mean it would have been kinda funny if they said, "and this one was lost about 200 yea-"
"Oh nah mate, that one's back in me gran's house"
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u/resinstein 3d ago
I took an egyptology class, where we watched a documentary made by a British archeologist, where he stole artifacts and documented his own crime.
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u/deleted_by_user 3d ago
Perhaps the only ever documented case of a British tourist pretending to be an American...
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u/ConeCandy 3d ago
Didn't the British give back a bunch of artifacts, and then many got destroyed during civil unrest?
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u/griffery1999 3d ago
This is a major concern with returning artifacts, especially in the Middle East.
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u/isthebuffetopenyet 3d ago
I'm surprised you haven't been downvoted for pointng this out, look at middle Eastern countries overrun by ISIL.
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u/KwikFitShitter 3d ago
Don't feel bad. The Ottoman Empire was smashing the shit out of them when we took them back to the British Museum. The Rosetta Stone was being used as part of brick wall for an Ottoman Fort for example.
Britain was one of the few countries that wanted to keep historical artifacts.
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u/vendymion 3d ago
Yeah. I prefer the artifacts to stay in UK where i am sure they will preserved over time. It's nice to want to send back historical objects. But let her guarantee that this man can promise that these ancient objects will not then be devastated by time and weather or by men.
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u/drusha77 3d ago
although I have to wonder how many of those artifacts would have survived the last 200 years, in their current locations, given the amount of bombings and unrest that part of the world has seen. the bamiyan buddhas didn't fare so well, granted they were religious in nature and offensive to muslims, but maybe resting safely in a museum far away would have prevented their destruction.
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u/Harry_monk 3d ago
I haven't been to Egypt. But the British museum is fucking great.
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u/SativaSawdust 3d ago
British Museum- "look at all this shit we stole lmao"
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u/TheLastDropofCoffee 3d ago
Acquired that was the word on the plaques xD
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u/JungleJim_ 3d ago
The great majority of it was legally purchased. And either way, I really don't understand this new obsession with not letting museums have objects and artifacts from other cultures?? Like isn't that the whole point of a bunch of museums, to study and celebrate other cultures? Should anthropologists and historians have to literally go to the country they're trying to study to get their hands on any artifacts?
I think a much better system would be to exchange artifacts between cultures, so that everywhere on Earth has a medley of artifacts and doodads from as many cultures as possible. It would really help us broaden our understanding of one another as a species
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u/dukh_izgnanya 3d ago
I agree, but sharing and lending artefacts is actually a big diplomatic issue. There was a huge stink a few years ago when the British Museum leant a part of the Parthenon collection to the Hermitage in Russia.
The British museum is fantastic because not only is it one of the best maintained and presented museums in the world, but it's free to enter, widely accessible, and all of their collection including items not on display can be viewed online. Most other museums charge you to enter or to use their images, but anyone can walk into the BM or access the site online for free. People forget- a major part of the museum's work is in research and education. The front facing museum part is relatively minor compared to the massive amount of research, conservation and cooperation that goes on behind the scenes.
People get very emotional about this topic, but the fact is that these artefacts being in this place or that place makes basically no difference to anyone except researchers.
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u/AjaxII 3d ago
Part of that does happen with traveling exhibits, where artefacts spend some time in many different countries. The terracotta warriors have come to Britain a few times and always prove popular.
But I agree with your sentiment, museums should be able to have artifacts from other cultures as that can stir up interest in their origin country. There's several countries I've always wanted to visit since seeing some of their artefacts in museums. I was really excited to go to Rome when I was younger because I'd enjoyed seeing loads of Roman statues and weapons and stuff in museums, and got interested in Roman history (I know it's not quite the same since they were dug up in England from the 400 year Roman occupation but it's not completely different either).
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u/JungleJim_ 3d ago
Travelling museums are neat, and there should be more of them, but I think a great step towards the end of our world's Euro-centric views would be to have permanent museums that house items from as many cultures as we can manage, especially when it comes to indigenous artifacts. The preservation of waning cultures is so much more difficult when there's this flurry of nationalistic pride that demands that only the cultures who made something get to have that thing forever. Imagine how many cultures have been lost almost entirely to the destruction of history's long line of empires, who did nothing but destroy and rampage through everything around them on that same misguided nationalism.
A lot of people view human history through very narrow scopes I think
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u/Stay_Beautiful_ 3d ago
saved is more like it
Many of the artifacts they "stole" would've been destroyed if they hadn't
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u/6_Cat_Night 3d ago
That's a truth that seems to be inconvenient to admit, currently.
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u/apotoftrees 3d ago
We coming back for the other half thanks for reminding us.
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u/Ancient-Reading-9220 3d ago
Yo blow this shit up
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u/pierreChodington 3d ago
Like this?
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u/justmrmom 3d ago
America! Fuck yeah! Coming again to save the mother fuckin’ day yeah!
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u/nousernametoseehere 3d ago
So happy to still see people referencing this movie. My sibling and I still do all the time, bahahaha.
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u/Weebcop_the_unique 3d ago edited 2d ago
In France we have a news channel called "Le Quotidien" that often references this line, I never knew where it came from but still found it funny as hell.
Now since I know the context, it's even better.
Edit : changed a word
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u/NonExistentialDread 3d ago
"it was inevitable"
"What?"
"It was inev.. inevitable"
"Come again?"
"IT WAS INEVITABLE! CLEAN YOUR FUCKING EARS"
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u/devlindigital 3d ago
My favorite bit on the topic by James Acaster https://youtu.be/x73PkUvArJY
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u/SuperRoby 3d ago
THANK YOU I love it and was desperately trying to see if anyone else had referenced it in this comment section!
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u/Da5idG 3d ago
Visited Cairo shortly after the Muslim Brotherhood were ejected by the army. Several eminent surgeons told me of sitting at home listening to rational debates about how to deal with the statues of animals and humans that were 'haram' under Islamic law.
The debate was between extremists who wanted to raze every stature to dust (as in Palmyria and other irreplaceable historic sites) and 'moderates' who felt it enough just to knock the heads and faces off.
They decided that the sphinx could just have its head removed. Yes, that sphinx, these people.
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u/[deleted] 3d ago edited 23h ago
[deleted]
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u/Balls_DeepinReality 3d ago
That doesn’t even address tomb raiders/grave robbers that will take anything they can carry.
By all means, return it to Egypt, but make sure it can get out or is protected.
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u/ZealousMulekick 3d ago
You can’t ensure it will be protected if a heavily Islamic regime comes to power
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u/jcfac 3d ago
I'm pretty sure it's not safe in Egypt. Like at all....
Yeah, I'm happy to visit England. I'm not visiting Egypt.
Unfortunately, some countries have archaic laws/cultures and the more of history taken away from those places, the better.
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u/mechano010 3d ago
Can you imagine the horror we went through at the time. It was truly a dark period
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u/Britlantine 3d ago
Artefacts in Western museums are also submitted to ongoing studies and reviewed and used for research.
For those who say photos work, new technologies that emerged since the artefacts were acquired (eg LIDAR, Carbon dating) mean there is a need to keep studying them.
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u/BeautifullyPneumatic 3d ago
This. Artifacts should definitely be returned to places they were stolen from, but some cultures dont have the greatest track record with historical artifacts in the first place. Obviously this doesn't apply to everything but why give back priceless pieces of history to people who's beliefs clash with said pieces?
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u/BigDaftLaddie 3d ago
Gonna be that guy… Didn’t the Egyptian museum get absolutely looted during the Arab spring?
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u/Ninety9Balloons 3d ago
Radical sects of Islam are still routinely destroying artefacts. ISIS was going around blowing up shit for a while there. Sadam was tearing down ancients walls and buildings in Bagdad. There's a 3,000-year-old wall about to be torn down in Iraq to make way for a road.
These countries need to be stable before returning stuff or else it's just going to get destroyed or stolen by some private collector and then no one will ever be able to see it.
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u/EnvironmentalMoney87 3d ago
Was gonna bring this up. Palmyra and Nimrud got absolutely decimated by those scumbags. But Nimrud was excavated by the British (Max Mallowan, Agatha Christie's husband btw), and a large portion of human cultural heritage remains in London because of it.
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u/AnotherRichard827379 3d ago
Yes. That’s the thing: putting these artifacts ’back where they belong’ sounds good and noble on its face. But anyone who knows how unstable some of those regions in North Africa are will tell you that you’re almost certainly condemning those artifacts to be sold by a corrupt official for profit, sold to finance state backed terrorism, or destroyed in the next riot/rebellion.
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u/Top_Lime1820 3d ago
Maybe an unpopular opinion but true. And I say that as an African.
We must just have proper educational visas to allow people to go to Britain or wherever to see those artefacts, because that is global human heritage.
But yeah until our countries stabilise dramatically, keep them where they'll be safe. Maybe one day the tables will be turned and we'll be the ones keeping European artefacts safe.
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u/Jenovahs_Witness 3d ago
Maybe one day the tables will be turned and we'll be the ones keeping European artefacts safe.
We never know where the events of the world will take us, and that is such a heartwarming though while different cultures rise and fall, humanity should protect the history of the world.
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u/sundownmonsoon 3d ago
Yeah for all the nobility people find in themselves for supporting this, at least the stuff in British museums get protected and preserved.
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u/theViceroy55 3d ago
Exactly! These should be seen as Human history instead of just a countries history and placed in the safest place for protection
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u/WtfMayt 3d ago
That’s why ‘It belongs in a museum’ is true and it will be correctly preserved in Britain.
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u/Malivamar 3d ago
or destroyed in the next riot/rebellion.
Or in the next fundamentalist takeover. And this being the middle east, theres always another right around the corner.
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u/freerangephoenix 3d ago
Exactly.
The Rosetta Stone, for example, came to the British Museum, which is free to the global public, in 1802. It's been carefully preserved there for 220 years. It has FIVE MILLION visitors per year.
Cairo, on the other hand, has had civil unrest twice in the last ten years, $3 billion in artifacts were lost in the violence, and they are still ruled by a former military commander who got 96.9% of the vote at the last election. Sus. In other words, no, Egypt is not a safe place for these priceless artifacts of incalculable, global, historical significance.
Understand me. I'm not against sending them to Egypt. I'm against sending them to Egypt to be destroyed next time they get tired of a dictator. Lost forever.
Can't you just show us, I dunno, 100 years without a violent coup before we entrust you with the irreplaceable, millennia-old artifacts?
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u/CanAlwaysBeBetter 3d ago
Egypt also topped the "Country I'd Never Go Back To" question on reddit a bit ago
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u/pascalines 3d ago
Exactly….”you can just come here and visit” no actually, as a woman I cannot. I’ll visit the British museum thanks.
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u/Doldenbluetler 3d ago
That's the first thing I thought, too. As a woman I'd rather visit Great Britain, just for my safety's sake.
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u/kwnet 3d ago
Ah yes, I remember that thread. I was surprised by the amount of (imo justifiable) hate directed at Egypt.
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u/gorzaporp 3d ago
Gonna throw this in here as a first generation Greek... The acropolis and other ancient ruins in Greece routinely need graffiti and vandalism repaired. It would be better off in a museum.
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u/JohnDivney 3d ago
first generation Greek
you must be very old
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u/gorzaporp 3d ago
Meant to elaborate, first generation born outside of Greece. Both parents are native and In the past have gone back almost every summer
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u/JohnDivney 3d ago
My dad is a refugee from the war. So I'm first gen, too. Big Greek community in St. Louis, MO. My mom is from here though. Awesome!
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u/AmITheRedshirt 3d ago
Ancient Greeks burnt their own libraries due to the Christian cultural purges. They then burnt the residual remnants in Spain because there were transliterated by Islamist.
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u/killingjoke96 3d ago edited 3d ago
It is kind of glossed over a lot that most of the expeditions that were out in the desert in the 1800's, had actually paid the Egyptian government a small fortune to be there. They were lords and aristocrats on a daft money fueled lark in the desert, not government stormtroopers come to pillage your village (albeit it was part of The British Empire).
People often forget as well that the British archeologists and the Egyptian Antiquities Divisions at the time, expected them to find absolutely nothing in the desert.
Its like me expecting to find buried treasure in a dilapidated castle, thats been picked through, in England. The chances of me finding anything valuable in it after all that time is laughable.
Now take that and add 4000 years onto it, thats how old the history of tomb raiding in Egypt actually is. The locals had been picking the place clean for thousands of years, to sell on as trinkets, well before the British or any other expeditions had even got there. Even the gold pyramidion at the top of Khufu's pyramid, an incalculably priceless artifact had been lost for centuries by that time. We still don't know where it is.
Now while they did find a couple of juicy things (i.e King Tut) the sad thing is a lot of the artifacts they found were considered worthless, thats why they hadn't been sold yet.
There are people putting this a bit more callously in other comments, but it really is the fact that they were put on display in The British Museum is what made quite of lot of them priceless.
I'll concede we did steal The Rosetta Stone from The French, but they were kind of shooting at us at the time so we felt we deserved that one.
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u/fishsandwichpatrol 3d ago
Thanks for sharing. Perspective is important with this sort of thing.
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u/LudovicoKM 3d ago
Funnily enough, the reason King Tut’s find was so amazing was precisely because the tomb had been forgotten by the Egyptians themselves, who had built another tomb on top. Raiders had never found the tomb, and it was one of the only tomb of the Valley of Kings still intact (out of about 100).
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u/killingjoke96 3d ago
I always found that pretty funny about Tut. The way his tomb was built and paved over was almost like it was made to be forgotten. Which has led to half a dozen theories that he was either assassinated or tucked away out of shame (examinations of his mummy show he was severely disabled and needed a cane).
His tomb was built to be forgotten and yet he's the most famous of all.
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u/Gcons24 3d ago
The English museums have been politely saying nah chap for hundreds of year
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u/in-car-nate 3d ago
Pyramids have caps because people destroyed the walls to take the stones from as high as they could climb. Selling them as pieces of the pyramid.
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u/Ituzzip 3d ago
The casing on the pyramids was removed 800 years ago.
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u/Presitgious_Reaction 3d ago
Woah it was that recent? I assumed it happened shortly after they were built
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u/SchizoidRainbow 3d ago
After an earthquake in Cairo, they "peeled" the pyramids of all that easy to get white limestone and used it to rebuild.
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u/redpandaeater 3d ago
Yeah it's just easier. Plenty of Roman buildings were destroyed the same way, even just for shit like fill in castle walls. Way cheaper than quarrying new material.
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u/ThothOstus 3d ago
The Colosseum was stripped bare to build some fancy villas and churches, kind of a shame, but at least they used it to create other beautifull buildings.
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u/fledgop 3d ago
Most of the old farmsteads etc around me have recently had the corner stones stolen, nice big granite or marble blocks.
So now buildings that have stood for who knows how long are quickly deteriorating year on year, just so someone can have a nice fancy garden ornament or whatever on the cheap.
Not the same scale, but it's still scandalous.
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u/EntrepreneurOk7513 3d ago
OTOH a case can be made for saving ancient artifacts. Yes, they should stay in their own countries but look what happened in Iraq in 2003. Almost all of these artifacts were then sold, funding terrorists on the black market.
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u/Chuffnell 3d ago
Or the taliban blowing up the ancient Buddha statues in Afghanistan.
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u/lowrads 3d ago
Or that cartoonishly evil villain, ISIS, which destroyed the gates to the ruined city of Nineveh, which are remains from a civilization from as far back as the early copper age, and who's origin was a shrouded mystery even in the time of Xenophon.
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u/tsikenugget 3d ago
Bro have you seen what they have taken from Greece ? 😂
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u/AmITheRedshirt 3d ago
You mean when the Greeks burnt down their own shit due to Christianity?
Also nobody forgot about Spain and the crusade that destroyed the remaining transliterated works of the library of Alexandria.
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u/AdministrativeEnd140 3d ago
Muslim countries periodically do the same thing. There’s a branch of Islam that is actively trying to destroy the pyramids and shit. Look at Syria. Nobody even knows what all they’ve destroyed. They did the same thing in Iraq and Iran. I think it’s totally reasonable to grab some artifacts and keep them in a place where a bunch of zealots can’t just come in and destroy them once or twice a century.
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u/Xciv 3d ago
Yeah, it's so tragic. China suffered this during the Cultural Revolution, looting and burning their own temples and priceless tomes.
You know how we have an arctic seed bank? We should fund an international Culture Bank and put it in some remote place. Put a sample of all the cool stuff there for future generations, especially the books.
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u/FPiN9XU3K1IT 3d ago
Pretty sure we're already doing that with digitalized media.
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u/Xciv 3d ago
Digitizing media doesn't fill me with a sense of certainty. Lots of websites and links from the mid 90s are all broken or dead. Who knows what will happen to Wikipedia in 50 years let alone 200 years.
I want physical objects, buried in an earthquake free zone, at a temperature that is stable year-round, with no exposure to light. Something that we can guarantee will last over 10,000 years.
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u/FPiN9XU3K1IT 3d ago
I'm not talking about burning it all on CDs and keeping them in a shed, there are absolutely ways to preserve digital information for longer time periods and there are a lot of people working on figuring out the best ways to do just that. And it's not like books last for 10 000 years, either.
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u/DrZin 3d ago
China: And give back all the s*** we didn’t get a chance to smash in the Cultural Revolution!
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u/OpenShut 3d ago
There is a great quote from a solider who sacked the Summer Palace after the Chinese kidnapped and tortured a peace envoy this was during the 2nd opium war so not like the Western powers weren't being huge dicks but here is the quote:
We went out, and, after pillaging it, burned the whole place, destroying in a vandal-like manner most valuable property which [could] not be replaced for four millions. We got upward of £48 apiece prize money ... I have done well. The [local] people are very civil, but I think the grandees hate us, as they must after what we did the Palace. You can scarcely imagine the beauty and magnificence of the places we burnt. It made one's heart sore to burn them; in fact, these places were so large, and we were so pressed for time, that we could not plunder them carefully. Quantities of gold ornaments were burnt, considered as brass. It was wretchedly demoralising work for an army
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u/jasperfilofax 3d ago
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u/IPoopBeforeIShower 3d ago
This is exactly what came to my mind.
“In your defense, ‘finders keepers, shut up’ has worked very well so far”
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u/sijam24 3d ago
I have to correct some misconceptions, almost nothing that was taken from Egypt was "Stolen". Foreigners purchased a concession to dig and keep a percentage of what was found, they divided the finds up with a government inspector. It was not until the early 1920's that the Egyptian government started to take care to keep finds in the country, particularly with the discovery of King Tuts Tomb. Many other objects were given away as state gifts, or purchased legally from dealers in the streets of Luxor, Cairo, etc. It was not until 1983 that the Egyptian government fully outlawed the selling of Antiquities!
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u/AlienSouth 3d ago
Sadly the truth is that those statues will be better preserved away from their origin country.
I remember when i visited Egypt, many of beautiful pieces of history were just laying around in the exterior with little to no barriers from tourists to touch them and slowly destroying them
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u/BeholderBalls 3d ago
“Every stolen artifact needs to return to its land.” Try bringing Syrian artifacts back bub
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u/BackInMyDayGuy 3d ago
Yeah, I'm sure there are some Afghan artifacts that the Taliban would love destroying too
ISIS alone destroyed so much history
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u/Mister_Twiggy 3d ago
Yes. And what if your a women who would like to see Egyptian artifacts without being sexually assaulted. Do people forget the “worst places to visit” thread from 2 weeks ago?
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u/neugo 3d ago
Notice how the half he's complaining about is sitting safe and cared for in a museum - while the other half is outside, exposed to the elements, where anyone could steal it?
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u/HenneX123 3d ago
most of the artifacts are not stolen. Most of those people in the middle east didnot care a long time about their cultural heritage. in fact, they even sold a lot of it to european museums. especially as many countries said: it was made before Mohammed so its unislamic crap. A lot would have been lost if it wasnot preserved by western museum. now, as the realize what they had, they want it back for free. Very strange attitude
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u/notoneforusernames 3d ago
Absolutely, remember ISIS blowing up all those old monument and artifacts not too long ago? Put more Middle Eastern artifacts in European museums, quickly
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u/neuropean 3d ago
Very sad, but it would have been much worse we’re it not for the sacrifices of people like Khaled al-As’ad. He sacrificed himself by not revealing the location of antiquities to ISIS thus ensuring their survival for now.
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u/Sthurlangue 3d ago
Egyptians were using mummies as firewood. So much more would’ve been lost if it weren’t in western countries that valued the historic significance of these antiquities.
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u/cbih 3d ago
Europeans were eating them and grinding them up for paint. Not exactly better than just burning them.
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u/crunchypuddle 3d ago
Since the 12th century, Europeans had been eating Egyptian mummies as medicine. In later centuries unmummified corpses were passed off as mummy medicine, and eventually some Europeans no longer cared whether the bodies they were ingesting had been mummified or not.
Jesus Christ.
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u/Frydendahl 3d ago
Jesus Christ.
Pretty apt, seeing as how Catholics eat Jesus' body once a week at the communion. Turns out it's always been about the cannabalizi
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u/batt3ryac1d1 3d ago
or they could sell the bottom half to the British museum so people can look at it without being groped
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u/jallnitelong 3d ago
I would love to go visit Egypt but me and my girlfriend are Lesbian looking af.
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u/twunkypunk 3d ago
I've been twice and would never go back. There's nicer places with less rubbish and corruption.
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u/odcgiovanni 3d ago
Isn't it better for the statues to be in a museum where they will be taken care of and won't be let on open ?
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u/GasStationMagnum 3d ago
“English people I know they are nice and friendly” reddit:I pretend I do not see it
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u/Sarchasm-Spelunker 3d ago
Not all of them. Some artifacts would be destroyed by their theocratic government upon return.
Never forget the Buddhist statues of Bamiyan.
Never forgive the Taliban.
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u/Silver-Tongue47 3d ago
And as soon as the Arab spring came, they robbed the museums blind - if the British Museum has not have bought, again bought, these items from the black market thieves, they would be lost forever
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u/jackoirl 3d ago
I’m not British but the Egyptians do an absolutely terrible job of maintaining and protecting their artefacts, I’d rather they be kept properly in a museum
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u/DRUNK-M3RL1N 3d ago
Now how are we supposed to determine what Egypt stole from other peoples during Egypt’s empire? Or did everyone forget they conquered and enslaved people too?
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u/NIGERlAN_PRINCE 3d ago
They stole the whole country. Give it back to the coptics!
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u/Gswindle76 3d ago edited 3d ago
And the Copts stole it give back to the Romans!
Edit….then the Greeks,
Edit 1.5: then Macedonia,
Edit 1.5.1: then the Persians,
Edit 2: then the Egyptians,
Edit 3: then Libyans,
Edit 4: then back to the Egyptians.
Edit 5: then the Nubians,
Edit 6: then back to the Egyptians.
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u/dubincubin 3d ago
I dont mind the idea of returning half a statue back to its resting spot, but the idea English people can then visit Egypt to see it is... not necessarily true.
I love the countries history but as a women i wouldnt be comfortable going there.
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u/andysaurus_rex 3d ago
I'm American and I visited the British Museum when going to Egypt isn't really on the table.
I'm not sure that having artifacts all lumped together in a museum is such a bad thing? Means you can appreciate them all at once rather than like one or two at a time. Plus they're preserved and taken care of. Personally I'm not sure I'd feel terribly upset if the Liberty Bell or Declaration of Independence was displayed overseas. If more people can see and appreciate it, isn't that a good thing?
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u/Raudskeggr 3d ago
I'm happier having these cultural relics in any museum that is accessible to the public and the scientific community.
These artifacts went millennia with nobody much caring about them. A lot of these countries are only concerned now becasue of the potential for tourism.
But really I don't think that just because you live on the same patch of dirt as the original owners from 5000 years ago gives you any more special right to these things as anyone else. At a certain point they're a part of our shared human heritage.
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u/bigmac375 3d ago
Considering the muslim brotherhood wanted to destroy all non-islamic religious landmarks (everything important in egypt) not 10 years ago, I would agree with you that the items are better respected and taken care of in England.
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u/Richnomoney 3d ago
Ironic cause extremists from own country destroy ancient history all the time. At least the British are smart enough to preserve it
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u/brynharker 3d ago
During the last revolution the Egyptian people ransacked countless tombs and sold them on the black market. They then started asking for them back because they belong in Egypt
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u/Darkkujo 3d ago
Interesting fact - the city with the largest number of Egyptian Obelisks is . . . Rome, Italy. The Ancient Romans loved the things and pretty much took as many from Egypt as they could. The most famous one is right in the middle of St. Peter's square in front of the Vatican.