After two and a half years under Islamic State control, all that is left in Mosul‘s museum are the traces of looting and destruction. Inside the rubble-strewn building, where militants filmed themselves destroying ancient artifacts, the large stone wing of a statue of lamassu — an Assyrian winged bull deity — lies on the dusty floor among other broken remnants of the past. A block engraved with Arabic Islamic calligraphy lies close by, and some Islamic manuscripts have been left undamaged. But almost everything else has gone. [...] Dozens of Assyrian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Persian and Roman artifacts that the ransacked museum held have all been stolen or damaged. [...] Islamic State militants filmed themselves smashing some of the building‘s contents including priceless statues with sledgehammers in 2015, as part of their highly publicised campaign to erase any cultural history that contravenes their extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam.
Nevertheless, the campaign continues to grow.Have they lost their marbles? [...] They are priceless artefacts from across the globe that have long been carefully preserved at Britain’s great museums. But now there is a growing campaign by Left-wing activists for items of ‘stolen loot’ to be returned to their original homes – despite the fact that some countries do not want the relics back [...] even in the countries from which artefacts have been taken, there are those who say the treasures are best left in Britain.[...] Last week the mayor of Easter Island said the British Museum is a better home for the disputed statue because his people are struggling to preserve the hundreds of others they have there. And in Nigeria, Iheanyi Onwuegbucha, the curator of the Lagos Centre for Contemporary Art, said: ‘Nigeria is not ready to receive anything. We have rundown, leaking museums and insect-infested storage facilities.’
Scores of fellows at the Society of Antiquaries of London, a charity that promotes the study of the past, are up in arms about the vote, which has allowed Hubert Chesshyre to continue as a fellow. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) heard evidence that Chesshyre, an expert on heraldry and genealogy who held a number of senior positions within the royal household, was found to have sexually abused a teenage chorister over the course of three years in the 1990s [...], despite being found to have committed the abuse, Chesshyre was given an absolute discharge. The finding saw fellows at the society, one of Britain’s oldest educational institutions, granted a royal charter in 1751, table a resolution demanding his removal. But a majority of fellows who voted backed Chesshyre [...].
There is a new cry for justice that is beginning to unsettle the cultural elites of Europe and America: it is a demand by formerly subjugated peoples for the return of their heritage – the art and artefacts plundered in previous centuries by brutal colonial armies, rich collectors and grasping missionaries. By what right do western museums and billionaire collectors keep property they know to have been stolen in earlier times, often looted in the course of what would now be termed crimes against humanity? [...] It’s time for their return: no longer can once-great powers get away with mealy-mouthed words of apology and regret for colonial abuses. They must surrender their loot.It might be upsetting the cultural elites - but it is not upsetting anyone else. By what right do western museums and billionaire collectors keep this cultural property? Because they are well looked after and won’t be destroyed my religious fanaticism or neglect and stupidity. In most cases, if those precious articles weren’t removed from where they originated they would no longer be in existence. These precious items should remain where they are, protected from those that may destroy them. There are plenty of examples recently of this type of vandalism. Recall the recent vandalism and trashing of ancient history, by bulldozer, sledgehammer and explosives, and the looting of museums, because they were deemed un-Islamic during ISIS control of historic sites? Gone, gone forever. What chance this won’t also apply to artefacts returned from European and other museums? Maybe make facsimiles, and return these to autocratic regimes likely at any time to be subject to civil strife by oppressed peoples? And meanwhile, ignore the majority UN supporters of such regimes, and their leftist supporters. Crimes against humanity? Hyperbole.
Hurmuz Mushi, an Assyrian activist and journalist, stumbled upon an artifact while he happened to be digging for a water pipe in the region of Fayda in northern Iraq. It was an Assyrian relief showing a figure seated on a throne flanked by three humans and three animals. His discovery would have brought nothing but joy to an archaeologist or museum curator. In a video posted online on the same day, Mr. Mushi made a sensible request that the Iraqi or Kurdish governments take the necessary steps to preserve the newly discovered antiquity [...] The response from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), however, was anything but sensible: On June 17th, Kurdish security forces, the Asayish, threatened his life and detained the journalist for three days until he was released on conditional bail for roughly $6000, an enormous sum in Iraq.[...] the very presence of anything Assyrian serves as a direct challenge to Kurdish claims of legitimacy over lands that have been subject to a decade-long program of Kurdification, annexation, and land-grabs, aided and abetted by the apathy of the central government in Baghdad and the chaotic interregnums after the Iraq War and the fall of ISIS.Assyrians are the last Aramaic-speaking ethnic group in the world. The distinct, indigenous community — whose members belong to various ancient Christian sects — numbered nearly 1.5 million prior to the Iraq War but has fallen precipitously to under 150,000 today. The KRG’s repressive and anti-historical policy toward Assyrian heritage is itself part of broader trends
It is highly likely at least 420 of about 1,500 artworks stored at Shuri Castle in Naha were destroyed Thursday by the fire that engulfed the castle, it has been learned. The 420 or so artworks, were not stored in a fire-resistant repository.
Turkish bombing damages 3,000-year-old temple in Syria, PanARMENIAN.Net Turkish airstrikes against Kurdish forces have partially destroyed a 3,000-year-old temple in northern Syria, according to a monitoring group and the Syrian regime, Telegraph reports. The neo-Hittite temple of Ain Dara was built in around 1300 BC and is famous for its elaborate images of lions and sphinxes. The temple was at least 60 per cent destroyed by Turkish forces as they attacked the Kurdish-held area of Afrin, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.
Slim Public Support for MOU's with Yemen and Morocco (CPO 16 Oct 2019)
Slim Public Support for MOU's with Yemen and Morocco The docket for the upcoming CPAC meeting on proposed MOU's with Morocco and Yemen indicates that 170 comments were received about one or both of these MOU's. The vast majority of comments came in response to an appeal from JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East & North Africa) against State Department efforts to recognize the rights of authoritarian MENA countries to the religious and cultural artifacts of their displaced Jewish populations.
Coin collector-numismatic trade comments were way down (to approximately 10) from 100's in the past, no doubt due to frustration about the likelihood of numismatic logic moving the State Department, as well as the fact that the obscure coin types found in these countries are mainly of interest to specialists.
Archaeologists and archaeological advocacy groups were only represented with approximately 10 comments as well, which should again confirm that there is very little actual public support for these MOU's.
Oddly, the "Antiquities Coalition" which has worked with the Yemeni Government on this MOU apparently failed to submit any public comments. Is it possible the Coalition has already received assurances that the MOU's are a "done deal?"
Waseem Ramli, the notorious Montreal businessman whose diplomatic status as honorary consul for the blood-drenched Baathist regime in Syria [...] walked out of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts with a priceless 1,820-kilogram late 5th century Byzantine Christian mosaic measuring roughly 3.5 meters by 2.8 meters originally from the vicinity of Hama on the Orontes River, [...] But Canadian officials raised no objections at all to surrendering the Early Christian artwork to the Syrian Arab Republic, Maclean’s has learned. [...] It’s now at the Syrian National Museum in Damascus. The massive mosaic came from a shipment of 82 mosaic fragments that the Syrian regime exported illegally in the late 1990s, likely in connivance with the smugglers themselves. The collection was intercepted by the RCMP and Canada Customs officials, and the artifacts were eventually returned to Syria, except for the Hama mosaic. Although it had been cut into two pieces, apparently for ease in transport, the mosaic was so magnificent that McGill University professor John Fossey, the Montreal museum’s curator of Greek art at the time, managed to arrange a loan of the work for display at the museum. The loan was extended several times, starting in 2004. [...] On Dec. 29 last year, Ramli walked into the museum, presented a letter from the Syrian government, and demanded that the museum surrender the Hama mosaic to him. [...] There was a bit of a rigmarole, but Ramli’s demands were all met within six months. [...] Global Affairs Canada didn’t give the museum a choice. Nobody said no. Nobody even said, hold on, maybe we should just say no, this belongs to the Syrian people, not to the criminal regime in Damascus. So Goldfarb and his colleagues had little option but to comply with Ramli’s demands and hand over the Hama mosaic.
China is destroying burial grounds where generations of Uighur families have been laid to rest, leaving behind human bones and broken tombs in what activists call an effort to eradicate the ethnic group's identity in Xinjiang. In just two years, dozens of cemeteries have been destroyed in the northwest region, according to an AFP investigation with satellite imagery analysts Earthrise Alliance. Some of the graveyards have been turned into car parks and even playgrounds, as the pictures show. Others were cleared with little care. In Shayar county, AFP journalists saw unearthed human bones left discarded in three sites. In other sites, tombs that were reduced to mounds of bricks lay scattered in cleared tracts of land. The images appeared as Xinjiang authorities this week claimed their officials were carrying out 'normal' tasks after shocking footage purported to show hundreds of shackled and blindfolded Muslim prisoners being transferred.Officials claim urban development and the 'standardisation' of old graves are the reasons for the bulldozing But Uighurs say the mass destruction is part of a state crackdown to control every element of their lives An estimated one million mostly Muslim ethnic minorities have been rounded up into re-education camps.
Yemen is involved in a three way civil war. Its government and its Saudi allies stand accused of intentionally targeting cultural sites, including bombing the Dhamar Museum into dust. This raises questions whether the Yemeni government has "unclean hands" and whether artifacts should be repatriated to a war zone. There are also other moral issues related to whether the United States Government should recognize Yemeni government rights to artifacts of displaced Jewish and Christian populations. Under the circumstances, one has to wonder whether the short comment period is designed to keep potentially embarrassing comments about the merits of the Yemeni request to a minimum.
The international art market as cultural bogeyman, Part 1: How confusion, complacency and politics play their part by Ivan Macquisten @IvanMacquisten Read more here: https://culturalpropertynews.org/the-international-art-market-as-cultural-bogeyman-part-1/ … Peter Tompa notes: this article hits all the major issues facing collecting. If you are a collector or interested in cultural property issues, well worth a read.
India on August 15 regained possession of a priceless bronze Navaneetha Krishna, thanks to a rare instance of moral courage by an art collector from London. After U.S. authorities charged Indian antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor with possession of stolen property last June, the London-based connoisseur, who had bought a few artefacts from him, came forward to U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), expressing a desire to surrender the pieces. [...] The Krishna bronze is estimated to be from 17th Century from Tamil Nadu.It looks like, even though these is zero evidence this piece was actually stolen, as is the case with Robin Symes and his fellows, the heritage police are now going just as zealously to jump on anything that passed through Kapoor's hands.
Unesco has sent a letter to the Peruvian government demanding information about the construction of a new airport near Machu Picchu and what impact it could have on the Inca citadel, the country’s biggest tourist attraction and a world heritage site. The letter, which has not been made public, reminds Peru of its obligation to protect its world heritage sites and directly refers to Chinchero, the historic village in the Sacred Valley, near the town of Cusco, where the controversial new airport is being built – to the horror of archeologists. The missive insists that Peru must coordinate with Unesco, the United Nations’ cultural agency, on any construction that could affect Machu Picchu and Cusco’s historic centre, also a world heritage site. [...] On a visit to the site this week, Peru’s transport minister, María Jara, said “nothing would stop” the airport’s construction.
On Tuesday the 54-year-old appeared at Leicester Crown Court for sentencing having pleaded guilty to fraud, where a judge gave him a suspended jail sentence on the understanding he would pay back the outstanding money. The court heard that since he was charged, Maloney had successfully paid back more than £6,000 but about £4,000 was still outstanding. [...] Andrew Howarth, representing Maloney, said his client [...] was selling his coin collection to pay money back to the group and could also promise to pay £200 a month until the outstanding cash was repaid. Judge Timothy Spencer [...] said: “You had an interest in archaeology, metal detecting and that sort of thing and then you turned to crime. “It was systematic milking of an account you were trusted to look after.This well illustrates the hypocrisy of the archeology uber alles lobby, who are often heard to call metal detectorists and collectors of coins and antiquities thieves, but it turns out are not averse to doing a little stealing themselves. And what a surprise to find that archaeologists too have coin collections worth thousands of pounds...
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The idea that Greece and Rome were beacons of Reason before they were destroyed by irrational monotheism, setting civilization back 1000 years until the Renaissance and Enlightenment happened, has been thoroughly deconstructed over the past 50 years. / This was concurrent with the decline of the Enlightenment itself, and of narratives of Western exceptionalism. The combined effect was to remove the factors which made education in the Classics socially valuable. /Of course, people are still interested in Greece and Rome, but the Classics are no longer useful for social advancement. The public views studying Classics largely as a personal eccentricity. / And so it is. People study it because they are interested in it. But it is increasingly difficult to make the case for it having value to society as a whole. New approaches are needed. / [...] The only way to avoid sinking is to build another ship. There are plenty of parts sitting around, they just need to be assembled.
An American woman captured by Kurdish forces after fleeing the last pocket of land controlled by Islamic State says she “deeply regrets” travelling to Syria to join the terror group and has pleaded to be allowed to return to her family in Alabama. Once one of Isis’s most prominent online agitators who took to social media to call for the blood of Americans to be spilled, Hoda Muthana, 24, claims to have made a “big mistake” when she left the US four years ago and says she was brainwashed into doing so online (Hoda Muthana 'deeply regrets' joining Isis and wants to return home)If you give up your home in order to join a “caliphate,” when all you knew about it is that they blow themselves up in the middle of markets, behead journalists, enslave Yazidi women, exile Christians, commit mass executions, you deserve to rot in the “caliphate.” The only thing these idiots regret about being in the caliphate is that they didn’t win. Why does the media continue to willingly deny the agency of Moslem women who join in crimes against humanity? Why are they "IS-brides" and not IS members? Additionally, why are pictures of IS Jihadist males always in battle gear but of females of them as regular teenagers?
The Egyptian prosecution arrested the brother of former Finance Minister Youssef Boutros Ghali on Wednesday, February 13 for four days under investigation in the case of Italy’s diplomatic bags of smuggled antiquities. Attorney General Nabil Sadek officially announced the arrival of the smuggled antiquities at Cairo Airport on July 30. Last year, the Egyptian Public Prosecution recognized the presence of Egyptian antiquities seized in the Italian city Salerno. Accordingly, Sadek ordered widespread investigations about these seizures. [...] 195 small pieces were found, in addition to 21,660 ancient metal coins. Egypt’s public prosecution immediately informed the Italian authorities that Egypt has the full right to have these smuggled antiquities back.
Three Indian natives were caught on video in India as authorities hunt down the vandals seen toppling over ancient temple pillars in a viral video.The video circulating on social media shows three men deliberately pushing over the centuries-old pillars at Vishnu Temple in the ancient village of Hampi, a UNESCO world heritage site that came second on The New York Times’ “52 Places to Go in 2019” list released just days ago. In the video, the trio can be seen shoving a pillar over before it crashes to the ground, joining other pillars that met a similar fate.India: Video shows vandals wrecking Hampi’s UNESCO world heritage site
The Idol Wing CID branch on Tuesday arrested K. Anandkumar Rao, former executive officer of the Arulmigu Tharukavaneswarar Temple at Tirupparaithurai, near Tiruchi on the charge of stealing three idols from the shrine and making a replica of one of them. Anandkumar [...] had been absconding for over seven months, said an Idol Wing CID release. It had earlier arrested the temple accountant Kannan and another person, ‘Thirumalaikatti' Ramanathan, in connection with the case. [...] Antique vessels from the temple were also stolen and used for making the new idol, said sources.India: Ex-temple official held in idols theft case
Now, thanks to the myopic and compliant Department of Media Culture and Sport, unsurprisingly, this Marxist nightmare is about to come true. The reptiles are already crawling into the sunlight from beneath their stones. Single coin finds of precious metals along with those of non-precious metals will soon become ‘Treasure’ under the intended changes to the Treasure Act. At first glance this looks advantageous, but if the proposals go ahead to tighten regulations, then archaeological digging of any sort (by professional archaeologists and others) will only be allowed by permit. Archaeologists and the Crown will have first dibs over what Detectorists or anyone else for that matter can keep in their private collections. Put another way, no-one would be allowed to search even their own land with a metal detector WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION.If artefact hunting with a metal detector is solely allowed by permit-led archaeological approval, on what grounds one wonders, would the hobby be even allowed? The answer is clear…it won’t!
And here I thought the PAS was etched in stone. The vile creatures inhabiting the socialist sewer once again somehow make it into the light again without being squashed as is their due, to try and redirect the scheme to their own miserable ends. Fight the good fight there John…a good example of never take your eyes off the sewer…credible threats against the hobby and the pastime still lurk there.Peter Tompa has similar observations (Public Consultation on Proposed Changes to UK's Treasure Act):
The proposals that require permits to metal detect, that create a new offense for purchases of undeclared artifacts, and declare archaeological finds Crown Property, are potentially very problematic. A permit requirement could be used to preclude detecting from “archaeologically sensitive areas,” which could mean everything. The proposed new criminal sanction could catch unwary buyers of objects that did not realize they were buying "treasure." Moreover, collectors should oppose the proposal's efforts to shift the burden of proof in a criminal matter. Declaring all finds crown property may be a way to avoid paying fair market value for finds the State retains. If you are a metal detectorist, an ancient coin collector, or just think the UK's current PAS and Treasure Act do a great job of bringing the public, museums and archaeologists together in a joint effort to record and preserve the past, please consider commenting. Comments are due on or before April 30, 2019.For more about the issue, see https://culturalpropertynews.org/uk-changes-treasure-act/ For a direct link to the consultation, see https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/revising-the-definition-of-treasure-in-the-treasure-act-1996-and-revising-the-related-codes-of-practice
The galleries consist of three types of storages; museological storehouses, subsidiary storehouses, and those belonging to archaeological missions. Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Ahram Online that the committee in charge of the inventory campaign, established in 2017, has inventoried 34 museological storehouses in early January and has found no missing artefacts. The ministry started yesterday an inventory of the subsidiary storehouses and those of archaeological missions that had not been opened or cataloged for several years.Already evidence of poor stewardship has come to light, for example in a mastaba in Saqqara that was used as a store gallery and had not been inventoried since 1997:
Upon entering the mastaba, the committee found evidence of attempts to remove some of the iron beams from the metal ceiling of the mastaba’s open court. The door of the mastaba was closed and sealed with stamps marked 1997. The committee has reported the attempted break-in to the Tourism and Antiquities Police and will continue with the inventory procedures to check if there are any missing objects.(Antiquities ministry starts inventory of artefact storehouses throughout Egypt)
Gailani, an associate researcher at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies, said more than one-third of the site of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh, on the outskirts of Mosul, has been covered with houses. "Archaeology is never a priority for any government," Gailani said. "It has always been like that and now, with Iraq's financial difficulties, the last place they want to put money is into archaeology."Gailani left Iraq to live in Britain in the 1970s, but has returned to her homeland for a few months every year to continue her work. She said she was particularly concerned about the looting and sale of artefacts, illicit trade among militiamen and Islamic State militants who destroyed many of Iraq's archaeological riches.
"One way to stop the looters is for the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) to start digging for the objects looters are after," she said. "The board has a large excavations and survey department but it has to cover the whole of Iraq. We have thousands of archaeological sites and the department does not have enough staff. They can't stop the looting and much of the development on archaeological sites."But Western museums and collectors could help to save the objects.
