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Every time some whinger whose ancestors were lousy at war whines about ‘stolen’ artefacts in Western museums, I’m reminded of a scene in a biopic about Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Confronted with an officious Egyptian flunkey accusing him of ‘looting Egypt’s heritage’, Carter snaps back that Egyptians have been looting Egypt’s heritage for 3,000 years.
He wasn’t wrong. Many tombs were looted relatively shortly after they were sealed. Over the millennia, Egyptians just kept on looting. They can sneer that the pyramids are in Egypt because the British couldn’t carry them off, but the Egyptians themselves gave it a pretty good shot. They not only stole the massive electrum (gold/silver alloy) cap from the pinnacle of the Great Pyramid, but also the entire white limestone casing that once covered the whole pyramid. That’s 5.5 million tons of Egypt’s heritage that Egyptians stole.
The only reason Tut’s tomb went un-looted was because it was buried under tons of rubbish. As Carl Benjamin says, ‘If we had to dig it up from a rubbish heap, you never really wanted it in the first place.’ Even some of the earliest gospel texts were unearthed from Egyptian rubbish heaps.
In case the losers still want to act all pious, we can point out that Egyptians are still looting Egypt’s heritage. Just last month, restoration specialist Ahmed Hassan stole a 3000-year-old gold and lapis lazuli bracelet and sold it to a gold dealer who melted it down.
He’s not the only Egyptian still stealing Egypt’s ancient treasures.
The prime minister of the Netherlands announced Sunday that the European nation will soon return a 3,500-year-old sculpture to Egypt, a day after he attended the lavish opening ceremony of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza.
Prime Minister Dick Schoof said in a statement that, during a meeting on Sunday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, he informed his counterpart that the Netherlands would return a bust of a high-ranking official from the dynasty of Pharaoh Thutmose III.
Note how they try and slant the story to make it look as if those wicked Europeans have been stealing Egyptian relics again?
The piece was discovered up for sale at an art fair in 2022 and was confiscated after Dutch authorities received an anonymous tip about its illegal origin, according to a statement from the Dutch government.
The statement said the art show “trader voluntarily renounced the sculpture” and that Dutch police and other officials “have investigated the origin of the head and found that the head was obtained by looting and was unlawfully exported.”
It is suspected that the relic was stolen during the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings.
Egypt should just be grateful that, unlike their fellow Arabs, European nations don’t just melt down or smash up ancient relics. Imagine if the ancient and irreplaceable relics of Nineveh and other early civilisations had been safe in European museums, where rampaging Muslims couldn’t smash them up or blow them up.
Oh, wait: this is Europe. That may well happen, yet.
