Review: March 2009

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They call it the British Museum. Why, then, does it count among its treasures a sizable portion of the frieze that adorned the Parthenon in Athens, Greece, for roughly two thousand years? And why does it hold the Rosetta Stone, the code-key of hieroglyphics, unearthed by French soldiers in the Nile Delta in 1799?

According to journalist Sharon Waxman, we should regard all these treasures as plunder. Some were, in fact, the direct spoils of war. Napoleon’s armies were accompanied by a corps of savants who collected scientific and cultural artifacts—including the Rosetta Stone—as part of the Little Corporal’s imperial vision. The precious Stone passed in turn to the British when they crushed Napoleon’s army in 1801, and thus it made its way to London.

Other museum showpieces were spirited from their mother countries in times of civil turmoil. But most of the artifacts, especially small ones like pottery and jewelry, were simply looted by local treasure hunters, usually after a serendipitous discovery, to be sold through private middlemen, including prestigious dealers who were willing to ignore the niceties of provenance. As antiquities trader Robert Olson told a reporter, “If it wasn’t for people illegally digging up stuff, there wouldn’t be museums.”

In the colonial world of the nineteenth century, the distinction between looting and collecting was hardly recognized. Great powers, intent on spreading Western civilization throughout the savage world, saw it as both a right and a duty to collect, salvage, and display the finest art and architecture of the ancients. Clearly the poor Turks and Greeks and Egyptians hadn’t done much to preserve it over the ages.

But as former colonies have gained independence and economic power, they have begun to call for the return of what they see as pillaged patrimony. Greece has built a new museum at the foot of the Acropolis, with exhibit space specially built for the return of the Parthenon frieze, and Turkey successfully won the return of a large collection of looted Lydian artifacts in 1993. Yet significant holdings of the world’s major museums remain in question, and, though UNESCO adopted a resolution in 1970 banning the illegal transfer of national treasures, there seems no quick practical resolution to the issue of what to do with those already displaced, or to the question of how to regulate future collecting.

Waxman has interviewed the principal figures on both sides of the debate to present a richly textured view of the problems facing the old imperial museums and the aggrieved nations. Waxman avoids the temptation to label bad guys and good guys. Great museums do indeed provide safe haven for artifacts that might otherwise be neglected or destroyed, and they clearly have the wealth, expertise, and location to display precious artifacts to a wide audience. What is needed, Waxman concludes, is a new ethos of forthrightness and collaboration on all sides. Museums must be up-front in acknowledging publicly the sources of their holdings, while countries seeking the restoration of treasures should establish clear procedures by which some artifacts can be offered for sale and loan, while others remain in their rightful homes.