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.
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).
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.
As I understand he was a completely unknown figure to historians until the find. I was told that upon reading the cartouche the first time, the reaction by archeologists was “Tut who?”
I'm somewhat talking out of my ass here, but I'm pretty sure he was kinda irrelevant for a Pharaoh. The only reason he's famous is because of his tomb.
The whole "return our priceless artifacts" nonsense is just exploitative shaming to get money. It's the civilizational equivalent to a guy who gives away trash to his neighbours, then demands a cut of profits when the neighbour turns it into art.
These countries wouldnt demand this if they were jealous and think they could profit. And everybody siding with them is just ashamed at how much better at society the west is than the rest of the world, and is tacitly agreeing that the west could afford to help their lesser out
Also add on to the fact that no one alive today had anything to do with what happened 4000 years ago. They're barely even related to them due to population migrations.
It's ours now, tough luck. Or tell you what, we'll give you the trinkets but you have to give back the things we gave you like electricity, penicillin, and railroads.
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u/killingjoke96 26d ago edited 26d 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.