"Egypt retrieves 4,000 yo figurine from London"-Artifact stolen from Aswan in 2013 & smuggled to London Repatriated thanks to honest collector.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order to suspend some immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries — Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Iran and Libya — for 90 days, halt the refugee program for 120 days and suspend the admission of Syrian refugees indefinitely.Pakistan's Moenjodaro is crumbling away Al Jazeera 23 January 2017;
What is visible today represents only 10 percent of the entire site. The rest remains buried. Officials are reluctant to unearth any more than the 225 hectares they already have. Limited manpower and funding, and lack of awareness among visitors, make it difficult to justify the unearthing of more of the ancient city, said Qasim, who retired from his role in June. "If our estimates are proven correct, Moenjodaro was probably a cosmopolitan city of its times. [...] 5,000 years ago, when people in Europe and other places lived in caves and jungles, people in Moenjodaro lived in brick houses in a civilised and planned city,"
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| The statue of Aule Metele, possibly an Etruscan man, with his Roman
toga. Late 2nd-early 1st century BC, from near Perugia, now in Firenze |
Islamic monuments in Egypt are neglected and have been left vulnerable to robbers over the past years due to the conflict in the tasks and functions between the Ministry of Antiquities and the Ministry of Endowments. On Jan. 2, Anani called on Minister of Religious Endowments Muhammad Mukhtar to find a solution to the conflict between the two ministries. On Dec. 14, 2015, then-Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh el-Damaty announced the theft of three niches from the storehouse of the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, located in the al-Fustat area in old Cairo. The thieves managed to replace the niches in the museum with fake ones without the ministry noticing until after they were offered for sale abroad. One of the niches that belonged to Sultan Barquq was sold in an auction in London, while the two other niches that belonged to Sultan Hassan and Emir Selehdar were sold in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. The ministry did not officially announce the recovery of these pieces.Probably the objects are safer in collections abroad than exposed to the risk of theft by greedy locals, probably aided by corrupt officials associated with the military dictatorship. Who knows how long ot will be before some of those smallportable items from government stores will start appearing on the western market? Not very long, in all probability.
On the black basalt slab, part of a larger piece depicting King Adad-Nirari III, are carved the words: “Whoever discards this image from the presence of Salmanu . . . and places it into a taboo house which it is inaccessible, may the god Salmanu, the great lord, overthrow his sovereignty; may his name and his seed disappear in the land, may he live in a contingent together with the slave women of his land.”Mr Korban can show proper provenance and utterly rejects the notion that it was obtained illegally.” In the place of the police chief, I'd give it back... but, to be honest, just to be on the safe side, when he gets it back from the British police, and it comes up for sale, I will not be placing a bid on it myself.
Two famous ancient structures in the city of Palmyra have been destroyed by ISIS forces, Syria's antiquities chief says. The Tetrapylon and the facade of the city's Roman theater have both been almost completely demolished, the official says, according to NPR's Alison Meuse. "Activist Khaled al-Homsi, who is from Palmyra, shared satellite imagery to Twitter, which appears to confirm the scale of the damage," Alison reports. "The face of the Roman theater is a pile of rubble and only four of the Tetrapylon's 16 columns appear to be standing." Alison notes that this is the second time over the course of Syria's six-year civil war that the Islamic State has seized control of Palmyra. ISIS first captured the ancient desert city in 2015. The extremist group held it for more than a year before the Syrian government seized it back — and then lost it again last month.Camila Domonoske, 'ISIS Destroys Ancient Theater, Tetrapylon In Palmyra, Syria Says' NPR January 20, 2017
"We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and restore its promise for all of our people. Together we will determine the course of America and the world for many, many years to come. We will face challenges. We will confront hardships, but we will get the job done. [...] Jan. 20, 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.[...] America will start winning again, winning like never before. We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. And we will bring back our dreams.[...] Together we will make America strong again. We will make America wealthy again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And, yes, together, we will make America great again. Thank you. God bless you and God bless America. Thank you. God bless America."
In one ton of gold is 700 kg of pure gold—and we must remember that what was stolen was jewelry, that is, alloyed with copper. Hence, after 1,000 years, it would be worth 1,125,898,240 million tons, which equals 1,125,898 billion tons for 1,000 years. In other words, 1,125 trillion tons of gold, that is, a million multiplied by a million tons of gold. This is for one stolen ton. The stolen gold is estimated at 300 tons, and it was not stolen for 1,000 years, but for 5,758 years, by the Jewish reckoning. Therefore, the debt is very large … The value must be calculated precisely in accordance with the information collected, and afterward a lawsuit must be filed against all the Jews of the world, and against the Jews of Israel in particular, so they will repay the Egyptians the debt that appears in the Torah.
"This is the Middle East, and it's no joke. Nor is Hilmi a crackpot:" Yossi Klein Halevi writes in The Jerusalem Post. "The surrealistic suit says much about the quality of moral discourse in the Arab world today. … In the culture of self-pity that has gripped the Arab world, justice and grievance belongs to its side alone. Still, there is, potentially, good news in this deeply depressing story. By intending to sue 'every Jew in the world' for the theft of Pharaoh's gold, Hilmi is acknowledging that Jews are the legitimate descendants of the children of Israel."
Saudi Arabia’s highest-ranking cleric has warned of the "depravity" of cinemas and music concerts, saying they would corrupt morals if allowed in the ultra-conservative kingdom. "We know that singing concerts and cinemas are a depravity," Grand Mufti Abdulaziz Al Sheikh said in a television interview cited by the Sabq news website late on Friday. The head of the Saudi supreme council of clerics [...] warned that cinemas "might show movies that are libertine, lewd, immoral and atheist, because they rely on films imported to change our culture", according to Sabq. He said there is "no good" in singing concerts, insisting that music entertainment and opening cinemas represent a "call for mixing between sexes". "At the beginning they would assign areas for women, but then both men and women will end up in one area. This corrupts morals and destroys values," he said. However, "entertainment through cultural and scientific media is okay", he said, urging the authority "not to open doors for evil"."Saudi mufti warns of ‘depravity’ of cinemas and concerts" The National, January 14, 2017.
Peter Tompa @Aurelius161180 2 hours agoThis is especially the case among corrupt and repressive raghead states like Egypt and Turkey.
There is a correlation between nationalistic govt's that demand repatriation of cultural artifacts abroad with human rights abuses at home.
Anthony Kimery, 'Report that Antiquities Sales is Major ISIS Funding Source Disputed by Authorities' Homeland Security Today, Jan 7 2017.Joseph Coplin, co-owner of New York antiquities dealer Antiquarium on behalf of the American Council for the Preservation of Cultural Property, and James McAndrew, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security’s International Art and Antiquity Theft Investigations Program [made] a joint statement, “There is a great deal of incorrect information being disseminated by the media, generally groundless numbers generated by special interest groups that are parroted by the media without the benefit of fact-checking. Conceiving and implementing military or legal agenda based on bad data is dangerous.” [...] Coplin and McAndrew told Homeland Security Today that, “Grantham’s article provides absolutely no evidence that objects purportedly looted by ISIS have been sold to art collectors --that is because there is no evidence available. There have been no seizures of such material at US ports of entry, or by European customs. There have been no pieces removed from auctions, art fairs or dealers’ galleries that were proven to originate from the current crisis, despite the hundreds of thousands of legal and transparent transactions of antiquities that occur every year in the art market.”“This is not, as Grantham suggests, because Western powers are turning a blind eye to such material; in fact, it is exactly the opposite,” Coplin and McAndrew said. “There have been intense efforts: legislative, law enforcement, diplomatic, social media, etc., to stop the influx of looted material from ISIS. It’s just that none of it has turned up outside of the region. Another issue that needs to be stated is that the Western antiquity market is already saturated with this type of material from the over the 100 years previous to ISIS when these common objects were freely traded. Anyone who collects this type of thing can find it in the legitimate market place in the West. Ancient Near Eastern is not a particularly popular collecting interest in the current market, partly because it is so heavily scrutinized, even though the material is relatively common.”
