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 [...].
