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This collection of digital items invites you to scrutinize museum practices into the acquisition, past and present and continued possession of works of art from different cultures, especially when these works come from former colonies. In her work “Where Europe Begins” Japanese author Yoko Tawada writes, “I also made the acquaintance of a shaman, but not in Siberia; it was much later, in a museum of anthropology in Europe… [The museum] deprived him permanently of his power” (134). Tawada is telling of a practice of colonization which has continued to today, the theft and placement of sculpture, human remains, and other culturally significant artifacts from colonized civilizations into museums of the colonizer.

Any trip to the British Museum or the Louvre immediately displays a bounty of items which are not from Britain or France, but instead were taken from colonial possessions. However, in some cases, at the time of acquisition, the item and its place of origin were within the borders of the museum. The British Museum acquired some of the Benin Bronzes after the British takeover of Benin, so Benin was part of the British Empire allowing for the logical inclusion in the British Museum. Now, when borders have changed and independence has been achieved, what should be done with these legacies of colonialism?

Many complicated questions surround these works. Who has a stronger claim, the culture that produced the work or the culture that ‘discovered it’? How are the pieces presented thousands of miles from where they were made? Who gets to view and appreciate these pieces? Who gets to study them? How much are they worth? How are these works currently generating revenue? Who profits off of a potential sale? Should a nation’s request for artwork to be returned recognized? What institution gets to make decisions related to the ownership of artwork? The United Nations? Museum Boards? What about in the case of individual collectors? What if stolen pieces are acquired in good faith, should they be returned?

This exhibition explores how these questions, and more are being answered by some museums and governments today. The examples displayed here are only some of the pieces which have been or are currently in dispute over ownership. Some have been returned or are planned to be loaned back, but these instances are not without their continued issues. Some seem unlikely to be returned and have even been litigated on. Some argue that these pieces should not be returned as they can be safety appreciated and understood where they currently stand. Others argue that museums themselves remain welcoming only for the colonizer. To explore these themes and more, begin your journey at Lake Turkana, the approximate location of the fictional Marvel nation, Wakanda.

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Museum Scene, Black Panther, Marvel Studios 2018 film.

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Museum Scene, Black Panther, Marvel Studios 2018 film.

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The title of this curation comes from Killmonger in this scene from Black Panther, “How do you think your ancestors got these?” Killmonger justifies his actions, killing guards and stealing the artifacts, because he is acquiring them in the same way they were acquired by the British. These of course are the fictional British at the fictional ‘Museum of Great Britain’, but this clearly links back to our world, a connection wonderfully articulated by Lise Ragbir in a 2018 opinion piece for Hyperallergic. To see a real example of artifacts taken by British soldiers in Benin, head to the British Museum.

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British Museum, Great Russell Street, London, UK

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Benin Bronzes, British Museum, hundreds of bronze and brass sculptures and plaques from the 16th Century on made in Benin City. Looted by British soldiers in 1897. 

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Benin Bronzes, British Museum, hundreds of bronze and brass sculptures and plaques from the 16th Century on made in Benin City. Looted by British soldiers in 1897. 

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These artifacts, beautifully crafted sculptures showing the skill and complexity of the Kingdom of Benin, are the classic example of imperialist art acquisition, taken when Benin City was captured and became a part of the British Empire. The website of the British Museum does recognize the colonial past in the acquisition of these pieces, but the use of the passive voice throughout the text leaves much to be desired in the telling of this history. Recently, the British Museum has announced that it will loan some of the figures to the upcoming Benin Royal Museum. Head to Benin City to learn about the new Museum.

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What are they?

The 'Benin Bronzes' (made of brass and bronze) are a group of sculptures which include elaborately decorated cast plaques, commemorative heads, animal and human figures, items of royal regalia, and personal ornaments. They were created from at least the 16th century onwards in the West African Kingdom of Benin, by specialist guilds working for the royal court of the Oba (king) in Benin City. The Kingdom also supported guilds working in other materials such as ivory, leather, coral and wood, and the term 'Benin Bronzes' is sometimes used to refer to historic objects produced using these other materials.

Many pieces were commissioned specifically for the ancestral altars of past Obas and Queen Mothers. They were also used in other rituals to honour the ancestors and to validate the accession of a new Oba. Among the most well-known of the Benin Bronzes are the cast brass plaques which once decorated the Benin royal palace and which provide an important historical record of the Kingdom of Benin. This includes dynastic history, as well as social history, and insights into its relationships with neighbouring kingdoms, states and societies. The Benin Bronzes are preceded by earlier West African cast brass traditions, dating back into the medieval period.

One element of the history of the Kingdom of Benin represented on the brass plaques and sculptures is the kingdom's early contacts with Europeans. Trade and diplomatic contacts between Benin and Portugal developed on the West African coast from the 15th century. These early connections included Portuguese and Benin emissaries voyaging between the capitals and courts of Benin and Portugal as these two powers negotiated their new relationship.

There are over 900 objects from the historic Kingdom of Benin in the British Museum's collection. Over 100 can be seen in a permanent changing display within the Museum's galleries. Objects from Benin are also lent regularly around the world. The British Museum's collections additionally include a range of archival documentation and photographic collections relating to the objects from the Kingdom of Benin and their collection histories.

Where are they from?

The Benin Bronzes come from Benin City, the historic capital of the Kingdom of Benin, a major city state in West Africa from the medieval period. Benin City became part of the British Empire from 1897 to 1960 and is now located within the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The modern city of Benin (in Edo State) is the home of the current ruler of the Kingdom of Benin, His Royal Majesty Oba Ewuare II. Many of the rituals and ceremonies associated with the historic Kingdom of Benin continue to be performed today.

How did the objects come to the British Museum?

By the end of the 19th century, the Nigerian coast and its trade were largely dominated by the British. It is in the context of this aggressive expansion of colonial power that the Benin Bronzes came to the British Museum.

During the second half of the 19th century, the balance of power between West African kingdoms like Benin and the European nations they traded with shifted towards European control. In the late 19th century, industrialised European nations accompanied by new military technologies began to exert greater power across the African continent. This political and commercial movement developed into the territorial land-grab known as the 'Scramble for Africa'.

This period of West African history was also significantly affected by the transatlantic slave trade. This vast traffic in humans supplied labour to the colonies and plantations in the Americas, including those of Britain. While by the late 19th century this trade had been largely abolished, its increasing scale and barbarity in the preceding centuries had a massive impact on West African societies.

The desire to further extend British power and influence in the region ultimately led to a clash with the Kingdom of Benin. The gradual expansion by the British into territory neighbouring the kingdom and an increasing reluctance to accept Benin's trading conditions created an atmosphere of distrust and animosity. In January 1897 an allegedly peaceful but clearly provocative British trade mission was attacked on its way to Benin City, leading to the deaths of seven British delegates and 230 of the mission's African carriers. This incident triggered the launch of a large-scale retaliatory military expedition by the British against the Kingdom of Benin. In February 1897 Benin City was captured by British forces.

Benin suffered a bloody and devastating occupation. No exact figure can be given for the number of Benin's population who were killed in the conquest of the city. However, it is clear that there were many casualties during the sustained fighting. The occupation of Benin City saw widespread destruction and pillage by British forces. Along with other monuments and palaces, the Benin Royal Palace was burned and partly destroyed. Its shrines and associated compounds were looted by British forces, and thousands of objects of ceremonial and ritual value were taken to the UK as official 'spoils of war' or distributed among members of the expedition according to their rank. This included objects removed from royal ancestral shrines, among which were ceremonial brass heads of former Obas and their associated ivory tusks. The looted objects also included more than 900 brass plaques, dating largely to the 16-17th century, found in a storage room within the palace. Having previously decorated the palace walls, these plaques were key historic records for the Benin Court and kingdom, enabling illustration of historic practices and traditions. Following the occupation, the Oba was later captured and sent into exile, while a number of Benin chiefs were executed. Justified as legitimate military action against a 'barbarous' kingdom, this brutal, violent colonial episode effectively marked the end of the independent Kingdom of Benin.

In the autumn of 1897, the British Museum displayed 304 Benin plaques on loan from the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and subsequently petitioned successfully to receive 203 of these as a donation. The majority of the remaining plaques were sold to UK and German museums and to private dealers, while a few were retained by the Foreign Office. Other early collections were purchased or donated by members of the Benin expedition.

The British Museum collection only grew to its current size following the acquisition of major private collections, such as that of Harry Beasley in 1944, William Oldman in 1949 and Sir Henry Wellcome in 1954. In 1950 and 1951 the Museum de-accessioned some of the Benin plaques in the collection and these were subsequently sold, exchanged or donated to the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria (25 in number) and the government of the Gold Coast (1). These plaques were later accessioned into the collections of newly established West African museums. At the time these objects were seen as 'duplicates' of other objects retained in the collection, something which later research has shown to be incorrect. A further number of such plaques (12) were sold to or exchanged with private dealers and collectors between 1950 and 1972.

In addition to objects that directly relate to the 1897 expedition, the Museum cares for objects from or associated with Benin City that sit outside the context of the 1897 expedition, including brass castings, carved ivories, contemporary artworks, textiles, casts and replicas, and archaeological finds.

What has been requested?

In October 2021 the British Museum received a written request for the return of 'Nigerian antiquities' from the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture, Nigeria.

In addition, representatives of the Benin Royal Palace have made various public statements asking for the Benin collections to be returned, most recently at the Benin Dialogue Group meeting hosted by the Museum in October 2021.

These requests are framed within the context of longstanding dialogues with the Museum, including during the visit of the Director of the British Museum to the Benin Royal Court in August 2018.

Status of discussions

The Museum has positive relationships with the royal palace in Benin City and with the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM).

The Museum's Director, Hartwig Fischer, visited Nigeria in August 2018. He met with senior Museum colleagues in Lagos and Benin City and had an audience with His Royal Majesty Oba Ewuare II which included discussion of new opportunities for sharing and displaying objects from the Kingdom of Benin. During that visit His Royal Majesty Oba Ewuare II repeated his request for Benin collections to be returned. He also acknowledged, however, that the objects serve as 'cultural ambassadors' for Benin culture when displayed internationally.

The British Museum is also a member of the Benin Dialogue Group, a working group bringing together museum representatives from Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom with key representatives from Nigeria, including the Benin Royal Palace and NCMM.

A central objective for the Benin Dialogue Group is to work together to establish new museums in Benin City to facilitate permanent displays of objects from the Kingdom of Benin, including significant collections of works currently in UK and European museums, as well as historic and contemporary works from across West Africa.

The British Museum's position

The British Museum has excellent long-term working relationships with Nigerian colleagues and institutions, particularly through the Africa Programme which has provided an important framework for colleagues to share skills and expertise. These enduring partnerships have enabled the Museum to engage in sustained and open dialogues concerning the Benin collections.

The Museum is committed to active engagement with Nigerian institutions concerning the Benin Bronzes, including pursuing and supporting new initiatives developed in collaboration with Nigerian partners and colleagues.

This includes full participation in the Benin Dialogue Group and working towards the aim of facilitating a new permanent display of Benin works of art in Benin City, to include works from the British Museum's collections. The Museum is also a fully committed partner within the Digital Benin initiative, focused on developing an online tool and database to digitally reunite as many as possible of the historical objects, documents, and photographs that illuminate the Benin Kingdom.

The Museum is also committed to thorough and open investigation of Benin collection histories, and engagement with wider contemporary dialogues within which these collections are positioned. This includes fully acknowledging and understanding the colonial history which provided the key context for the development of the Museum's Benin collections.

Where else can they be seen?

In Nigeria objects from the Kingdom of Benin are housed in the collections of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), and displayed in museums in Benin City and in Lagos. However, the most significant collections are held outside Nigeria.

Various other institutions holding Benin collections are found around the world, including in the USA where there are important collections in Chicago, Boston, New York, Denver and Philadelphia.

Along with the British Museum and the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin, the following European and UK Museums with collections from the Kingdom of Benin are also participants in the Benin Dialogue Group: Weltmuseum, Vienna, Austria; Museum am Rothenbaum, Hamburg, Germany; Staatliche Kunstammlungen, Dresden, Germany; Museum für Völkerkunde, Dresden, Germany; GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany; Linden-Museum, Stuttgart, Germany; Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, Netherlands; Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, UK; Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, UK; National Museums Scotland, UK.

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The 'Benin Bronzes' (made of brass and bronze) are a group of sculptures which include elaborately decorated cast plaques, commemorative heads, animal and human figures, items of royal regalia, and personal ornaments. They were created from at least the 16th century onwards in the West African Kingdom of Benin, by specialist guilds working for the royal court of the Oba (king) in Benin City.

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"Benin Royal Museum: The Ancient City is Not Ready.” Article in LivingSpaces by Yakubu Paul, a Nigerian writer and architect published June 11, 2020.

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"Benin Royal Museum: The Ancient City is Not Ready.” Article in LivingSpaces by Yakubu Paul, a Nigerian writer and architect published June 11, 2020.

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The colonial past lingers in the British announcement to loan back the famous figures to the the forthcoming Benin Royal Museum, whose website is currently under copyright to the Trustees of the British Museum. Yakubu Paul criticizes not only the plan to 'loan back' these looted items, but also the fact that the architect chosen to design the new Museum is not Nigerian, but British-Ghanaian. He argues that this continues the history of colonial rule and "places Benin at the mercy of Europe for its individuality." He also raises questions similar to Lise Ragbir about who museums belong to and who feels belonging inside a museum. Head to Berlin to see the next example of looted art.

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It was one of the late weekends in October 2018, and the school's Alpha calendar year was coming to a close. We gathered to watch the Oba of Benin's 2nd coronation anniversary as a break from the torment of Studio-design finals.

What caught our attention as architecture students were the promised return of the 10000 stolen artefacts from Europe and the design of a New Museum to welcome them home- The Benin Royal museum it would be called. As people who usually creep to our subconscious, we took a moment within ourselves; we vaguely imagined what the museum would look like, how our ideas towards the creation of this Archetype might be acknowledged, how an organized competition for ideas of this building would be thrown to the Nigerian architecture community and finally, how a Nigerian would design a notable Nigerian building for the first time in over 3 decades.

"Omo na this Nigeria Una dey o," someone said. We quickly came back to reality knowing the history of the country's architecture failures. How good building designs never come to life, strangled by politics, economy and the incredulity of Nigerian architects. As we laughed off the situation like we usually do, some of us held on to that absent shred of hope; even I went on to attempt this Museum design as my Thesis.

The Irony is, as Benin fights Europe's plans to "loan" back these artefacts that were stolen as against a total return, an imported Museum design to house these artefacts is a sell-out statement of our identity, a joke to our claim and places Benin at the mercy of Europe for its individuality.

I visited Benin city, Edo state at the close of 2019. It was this quiet and shy city living in fear of being a cultural force. It looked satisfied with its cultural history and has found solace in being called the Ancient city. The great Oba Akenzuwa cultural centre stood sad and idle, the famous Igun street of artefacts was clouded with that hopeless air and the look of shattered dreams from the artists. Finally, the Oba's palace with its notable palace walls- the only reminiscent of the great walls of Benin and the last evidence of the city's history, was now being covered up with modern fence walls. As this construction went on, it looked like the final epilogue to the tales of a great kingdom and everyone around looked satisfied with it. Any present visit to the city in search of its stories was now a waste and any physical proof of its history was non-existent. At the eve to the gift of its 10000 stolen artefacts and a new cultural museum, the city now hid from itself and was a complete shadow of its history.

As the city slowly struggled with self-identity, it was later reported that Sir David Adjaye, a British- Ghanaian architect would be designing the Benin Royal Museum. A blessing and a curse in disguise. A notable architect with a famous dexterity in cultural buildings built from detailed connections of history, culture, materiality and the city's morphology. Despite these accolades, he isn't Nigerian. The Benin dialogue group which were the client Representatives of the Benin Museum had overlooked a national-scape of architects. They have decided to not give indigenous designers a chance in the quest for notable buildings just like past governmental leaders before them. They had taken solace in the mind-set of imported ideals being better and crushed the last shred of hope and dreams of these architects. Just like its economy, Nigeria has had its fair share of imported designs being its notable buildings; it's now hard to point to a top notable building in Nigeria and mention an Indigenous name or team behind it. Most recently, the world trade centre and millennium tower both notable buildings in Abuja, Nigeria's capital were designed by Woods Bagot and Manfredi Nicoletti which are Australian and Italian architects respectively. The Benin Royal museum is another opportunity lost and a major one at that; it's a cultural building that is meant to connect the city, that is meant to bridge the socio-cultural values and history of its lost past to the present, and holds the best stance for an Indigenous building. The Irony is, as Benin fights Europe's plans to "loan" back these artefacts that were stolen as against a total return, an imported Museum design to house these artefacts is a sell-out statement of our identity, a joke to our claim and places Benin at the mercy of Europe for its individuality.

In retrospect, the city and the country as a whole is unprepared to welcome these artefacts; we are setting up ourselves to receive a colossal building set on a hill and disconnected from the city. A museum that will host the city's history but also feel alien; people would revere it but would forget it once they leave. A building that would feel at home and foreign at the same time where people go for celebratory visits to feel different for a short period as against a building that changes the mindset of a whole community. The Benin Royal Museum is a Building not meant to only house artefacts. It has a greater task; it has to revive the city's cultural history, it has the role of bridging the city's socio-cultural gaps within its past and the present, it needs to fill the blank space within our minds of the culture and history before the punitive expedition in 1897, it needs to resuscitate the ancient city of Benin to finally speak for itself. This building can instigate these things but can never do it alone.

Learning closely from the ancient cities in Greece; how Athens still celebrates its ancient ruins such as the Parthenon, Theatre of Dionysus, The temple of Zeus, The temple of Hephaestus and so much more. The city needs to unwrap itself, it needs to consciously revive and celebrate the remnants of its history. Primal structures such as the Benin palace, the Benin moat, older traditional houses with significance need to be opened, preserved and conserved for people to encounter physical history. The city needs to celebrate more of its culture, make the Igun street of artefacts an important centre that defines the identity of the city, invest in its Art and artist, transcend Benin art from a thing of history to a thing people are willing to be part of and engage the community to mine and nurture its collective architecture and culture. More importantly, it needs to engage its people and professionals, its architects, artists, historians, and curators to question their wealth of knowledge, engage the wider community and provide answers to a Museum that inspires a new cultural city.

"One of the great beauties of architecture is that each time, it is like life starting all over again" Renzo Piano

It is a blank page that forgives our past and gives us another chance to make the right decisions. One Major thing we learn from the history of Benin is that collectively and indigenously they created a great kingdom; A city that Europeans saw, marvelled, documented, envied and ultimately destroyed. This is a time to learn from them, reclaim that self-pride, that self-belief and engage our wealth of talents. This is a call to Nigeria generally, its leaders, its people, to have faith in their architect; Trust them with these buildings, organise open competitions to find the best, pair them with international architects in an honest way if needed and create a place where our dreams are valid. Sometimes I go through this article and it sounds like so much idealism which is earnestly absent in our present Nigeria. I hope I can speak to one person. I hope the Benin Dialogue group and its architect understand the kind of city its museum and artefacts need and carve Benin city to those needs. I hope they now localize the design process, engage the people, its professionals and the native community towards the development of the Benin Royal Museum.

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Benin Royal Museum: The Ancient City is Not Ready

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What caught our attention as architecture students were the promised return of the 10000 stolen artefacts from Europe and the design of a New Museum to welcome them home- The Benin Royal museum it would be called.

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Neues Museum, Bodestraße, Berlin, Germany

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Bust of Nefertiti, c. 1350 BCE, analyzed in Khan Academy Video, currently on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin

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Bust of Nefertiti, c. 1350 BCE, analyzed in Khan Academy Video, currently on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin

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The Bust of Nefertiti is a remarkable piece of Egyptian artwork made from limestone and plaster. The Bust was removed from Egypt in 1913 and, as noted by the narrators of the Khan Academy video, has become one of the most famous and treasured items in the Neues Museum in Berlin. Head to Cairo to see how to Egyptian authorities feel about this placement.

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Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

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“Egypt renews demands to retrieve Nefertiti bust from Germany” article published in Al-Monitor on October 2, 2020 by Ibrahim Ayyad.

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“Egypt renews demands to retrieve Nefertiti bust from Germany” article published in Al-Monitor on October 2, 2020 by Ibrahim Ayyad.

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As the country of origin of the Bust of Nefertiti, Egypt has been requesting the bust be returned almost since it was first removed. Germany insists that the bust was removed under the archeological standards of the day, but Egyptian authorities argue that the significance of the bust, now on full display in the Neues Museum, was under exaggerated in order to the removal to be legal. Germany continues to insist that the bust will not be returned. Head to Saqarah, Egypt to learn about another one of Egypt's stolen artifacts.

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CAIRO - The Egyptian government is trying to reclaim the bust of Queen Nefertiti from Germany, but the latter is refusing calls for returning the Pharaoh statue to Cairo. Meanwhile, Egypt has emphasized that it is taking all necessary measures to restitute Egyptian antiquities that were smuggled out of the country illegally, including Nefertiti's bust.

German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt and his team had discovered the Nefertiti bust on Dec. 6, 1912, in what had been the workshop of sculptor Thutmose in Amarna in Minya governorate. Borchardt took the statue out of Egypt in 1913, in breach of the rules on the division of architectural finds at the time.

Back then, the division rules stated that exceptional antiquities discovered by foreign excavation teams would be handed over to Egypt, while the remaining artifacts would be distributed among the party that discovered them and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Germany claim that the division of architectural finds in Amarna was legal and that Nefertiti's statue was Berlin's share, as per the German Deutsche Welle website. Egypt accuses Borchardt of wrapping the bust to conceal its value and smuggling it out of the country.

Egypt has been demanding the restitution of Nefertiti's bust for decades. But all Egyptian attempts failed. In 1933, Hitler refused to return the statue to Egypt and wanted it to be displayed in the museum of the capital Germania that was to be established. In April 1946, King Farouk I, then-king of Egypt and Sudan, sent out an official memorandum to the Allied Control Council in Germany calling for the return of the statue.

In 2011, Zahi Hawass, then-secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, sent out an official letter to the German government, the relevant authorities and the German ambassador to Egypt, including a request to return the head of Nefertiti to Egypt.

During a visit to Germany on Sept. 18, Egypt's Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khaled al-Anani reiterated his country's claim for Nefertiti's bust. In TV statements Sept. 19, Anani said he had asked the German authorities to return Nefertiti's bust, but they insisted on keeping it since it is a unique piece in the art of sculpture.

He noted that Germany handed him five antiques to return to Egypt. He underlined that Egypt has continued to negotiate and take all necessary measures to reclaim the pieces that were illegally taken out of Egypt, including Nefertiti's bust, which was taken from Egypt 107 years ago in a controversial way.

The relevant authorities in Germany insisted that the statue is owned by the Neues Museum in Berlin. Brigitte Gobtsel, press and media officer at the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) in Berlin, said, "There are no negotiations with Egypt currently to return the statue, which is the property of the Neues Museum in Berlin."

Gobtsel said in press statements Sept. 21, "Cairo did not submit any official request to restitute the bust of Nefertiti for long years." She noted, however, that Germany is always open to negotiations with Egypt.

Statements by German officials in the past reflect Germany's insistence on keeping Nefertiti's bust rather than returning it to Cairo. German Ambassador to Egypt Julius Georg Luy said in a press statement after meeting with former Egyptian Minister of Tourism Yehya Rashed in February 2017 that the minister could not convince him with his point of view in regard to the return of Nefertiti's bust. He added, "Nefertiti's bust is widely popular in Germany."

While Germany holds on to Nefertiti's bust, archaeological experts and officials believe the statue is an Egyptian right and must be returned. They stress that the Egyptian government will continue to take appropriate measures and be patient in its negotiations with Berlin. There is also a proposition to turn the case into a popular campaign, by launching petitions for example, to avoid embarrassing the Egyptian government.

Mamdouh el-Damati, former Egyptian minister of antiquities, believes that Nefertiti's bust has huge historical value. He noted that the authorities have been negotiating with the Germans since 1922, through 1933 in the days of King Fouad and then in 1945 during the rule of King Farouk.

Damati told Al-Monitor that he hopes the negotiations with Germany will succeed this time. He said the fate of Nefertiti's bust depends on the negotiations.

He noted that Germany's pretext is that the statue is its right, as per the legal division that happened after the official excavations. Meanwhile, Egypt states that the division process was fraudulent and deceitful. Damati believes that the prolonged negotiations will finally tip the balance in favor of the holder of the stronger argument.

He said that Egypt will continue its negotiations and calls for returning the statue from Berlin, and that UNESCO's 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property plays no role in the fate of the statue. The convention has been in force since 1971 and does not have a retrospective effect.

Shaaban Abdel-Gawad, head of the Department of Repatriated Objects at the Ministry of Antiquities, confirmed Cairo's ongoing negotiations with Berlin, stressing that Egypt would not cede its right to reclaim Nefertiti's bust.

He told Al-Monitor that these negotiations will take time, and no date can be set for them to be resolved.

Hawass confirmed that Egypt was able to prove that the bust of Queen Nefertiti left Egypt illegally and that it was stolen. Therefore, it must be returned. In TV statements on Sept. 22, Hawass accused Borchardt of stealing Nefertiti's head by passing it off as a less significant discovery, smuggling it to Germany and leaving it out of the division process.

Hawass added in his statements that he is collecting signatures from Egyptian and foreign intellectuals to return Nefertiti's bust to Egypt because it was smuggled illegally, to avoid embarrassing the Egyptian government and to make the return of Nefertiti's bust to Cairo a popular demand.

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Egypt renews demands to retrieve Nefertiti bust from Germany

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CAIRO - The Egyptian government is trying to reclaim the bust of Queen Nefertiti from Germany, but the latter is refusing calls for returning the Pharaoh statue to Cairo. Meanwhile, Egypt has emphasized that it is taking all necessary measures to restitute Egyptian antiquities that were smuggled out of the country illegally, including Nefertiti's bust.

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Saqqara Necropolis, Saqarah, Al Badrashin, Egypt

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Mask of Kanefernefer, funerary mask dating to the New Kingdom in Egypt 1295 – 1186 BCE; found in 1952 and stolen between 1959 and 1973. 

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Mask of Kanefernefer, funerary mask dating to the New Kingdom in Egypt 1295 – 1186 BCE; found in 1952 and stolen between 1959 and 1973. 

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Stolen Egyptian antiquities are all too common, leading to the government to create departments to oversee Egyptian antiquities, such as the Supreme Council of Antiquities, now the Ministry of State for Antiquities. The Mark of Kanefernefer, a funerary mask of an Egyptian noblewoman, was uncovered by Egyptian archeologists in 1952. Sometime between 1966 and 1973, the mask disappeared with no paper trail. In the 1990's, it reappeared on the antiquities market and was purchased by the St. Louis Art Museum. The Egyptian government insisted that it be returned. Head to St. Louis to see what happened.

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Date: New Kingdom, Dynasty 19, ca. 1295-1186 BC plaster, linen, resin, glass, wood, gold, and pigment
Material:
Provenance: Saqqara, Sekhemkhet Enclosure, burial of Kanefernefer
Inscriptions: One ancient inscription in ink on hand; later removed.
Excavated by: Mohammed Zakaria Goneim in 1951/52 for the Egyptian Antiquities Service
Publication: The Buried Pyramid, (London, 1956), Plate LXVIII

Status: Currently in the possession of: The St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

In the early 1950's, Mohamed Zakaria Goneim discovered the burial of a 19th Dynasty noblewoman named Ka-nefer-nefer inside the 3rd Dynasty enclosure of Sekhemkhet at Saqqara. In 1959, Ka-nefer-nefer's funerary mask, along with a number of other objects from Goneim's excavations, was transported from the Saqqara storerooms to the Cairo Museum en route to Tokyo for inclusion in an exhibition that was never mounted. It was returned Saqqara, and then sent to the antiquities department conservation lab attached to the Egyptian Museum in 1966.

In 1973, many of the objects from the burial of Ka-nefer-nefer were registered at the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. The mask was not among these objects; since it was the most important object in the assemblage, we can infer that it was missing by that time.

In 1998, the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) purchased this mask from Phoenix Ancient Art (owned by the Abouttam brothers, who have since been convicted on smuggling charges and sentenced to jail time in Egypt) for nearly half a million dollars. The provenance provided to SLAM with the mask is poorly documented and unconvincing; when coupled with SCA records, it can be shown clearly to be false: SLAM claims that the mask was given to Goneim by the Egyptian government following his discovery of it in 1952, and that the mask was seen overseas in 1953. This is not possible: Goneim, like any excavator working for the Egyptian government, would never have been awarded objects, and the SCA has clear documentation that the mask was in Egypt until at least 1966. Other parts of the alleged provenance can also be shown to be faulty, and it is the contention of the SCA that SLAM did not carry out due diligence before purchasing the mask. The mask is clearly stolen property, and must be returned to Egypt.

Anyone wishing to help the SCA put pressure on SLAM to return the mask can write a letter supporting our position to:

Dr. Brent Benjamin, Director
St. Louis Art Museum
One Fine Arts Drive
Forest Park, St. Louis, MO 63110-1380
Telephone 314.721.0072
dzumwalt@slam.org

Gay, Malcolm. "Out of Egypt," Riverfront Times (February 15, 2006)

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Ministry of State for Antiquities - Recovering Stolen Treasures

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Date: New Kingdom, Dynasty 19, ca. 1295-1186 BC plaster, linen, resin, glass, wood, gold, and pigment Material: Provenance: Saqqara, Sekhemkhet Enclosure, burial of Kanefernefer Inscriptions: One ancient inscription in ink on hand; later removed. Excavated by: Mohammed Zakaria Goneim in 1951/52 for the Egyptian Antiquities Service Publication: The Buried Pyramid, (London, 1956), Plate LXVIII Status: Currently in the possession of: The St.

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St Louis Art Museum, Fine Arts Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA

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US vs. Mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer, court case in the 8th circuit court which allowed the Saint Louis Art Museum to retain the stolen work

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US vs. Mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer, court case in the 8th circuit court which allowed the Saint Louis Art Museum to retain the stolen work

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When the US government, at the request of Egyptian authorities, attempted to get the museum to return the piece to Egypt, the St. Louis Art Museum took an unprecedented step and sued the government to hold onto the statue. In the subsequent court case, US vs. Mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer, it was ruled that the St. Louis Art Museum was able to keep the mask, it part because it was purchased in good faith.
This case is unusual compared to some of the others because it was stolen during the modern era through art smuggling, not imperial or colonial relationships, but the same mechanisms of the Western right of acquisition seem to be at work. A museum using its resources to sue to keep an item is nearly unprecedented. It is also important to note that the case for the return of a stolen artifact to Egypt, its country of origin, was litigated entirely on US soil under US law. Feeling down? Head back to Berlin for some better news.

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Should American institutions hold onto dubiously acquired artifacts, even when their countries of origin ask for them back?

In certain respects, the tale of the Ka-Nefer-Nefer follows a familiar script: like many disputed antiquities, the Egyptian funerary mask was unearthed last century and quickly vanished, spending nearly 50 years in obscurity before resurfacing on the European art market in the late 1990s. The St. Louis Art Museum soon bought the mask -- an elaborately tooled cartonnage of blended gold, glass and linen. It has since become the centerpiece in a bitter ownership dispute between the museum, which claims clear title, and Egypt, which charges the mask was plundered from a government storeroom.

But this story went decidedly off-script last year after U.S. officials, acting on Egypt's behalf, entered the fray. The feds informed museum leaders that they believed the mask was stolen, and they intended to use the courts to seize the artifact and return it to Egypt. But where some museums might have simply handed over the goods, St. Louis went on the attack, filing its own a pre-emptive lawsuit that claimed the statute of limitations had expired -- an aggressive challenge from an institution that has repeatedly defied calls to release its grip on this pricey piece of loot.

"This is very unusual," Patty Gerstenblith, who directs the Center for Art, Museum & Cultural Heritage Law at DePaul University, told me not long after the museum filed its suit. "This is the first time I've seen a public institution like a museum deciding to expend its funds to proactively sue the government."

Now comes U.S. District Judge Henry E. Autrey, who on March 31 handed museum leaders a legal victory, and a moral challenge, when he dismissed the government's forfeiture claim, finding it "devoid of any facts showing that the Mask was 'missing' because it was stolen and then smuggled out of the country." (Underline and bold in the original).

Indeed, there are no official records showing that the mask was sold by -- or stolen from -- the Egyptian government. Rather, Egyptian records indicate that the mask, excavated during a state-sponsored dig in the early 1950s, was registered to the Egyptian Antiquities Service. The government kept it in storage until 1966, when officials shipped it to Cairo for restoration. From there, the paper trail goes cold. It was not until seven years later, during a routine inventory in 1973, that the mask came up missing.

Legally, at least, the Ka-Nefer-Nefer simply vanished.

But the Egyptian record stands in stark contrast to the museum's own provenance for the mask, which has often been used to justify its possession of the 3,200-year-old artifact. According to that history, the mask entered the European art market around 1952, its presence confirmed by a lone Swiss businessman who mysteriously espied it during a trip to Brussels that year. (How the sellers knew, nearly half a century later, to contact the businessman about his serendipitous trip has never been adequately explained.)

The mask entered a private Swiss collection in the early 1960s, where it remained for roughly 30 years, until Phoenix Ancient Art, an elite antiquities firm with galleries in both Geneva and New York, acquired it, selling it to the St. Louis museum in 1998 for $499,000. Owned by the Lebanese brothers Ali and Hicham Aboutaam, Phoenix Ancient Art inhabits a rarefied world where a handful of dealers vie for the extremely rare, valuable or never before seen. Viewed in another light, this is a market whose emphasis on the hard-to-find means that plunder is often whitewashed, making it all but indistinguishable from the legitimate market.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations estimates that losses from art and cultural property crimes weigh in at as much as $6 billion annually. And while the illicit antiquities trade represents only a fraction of that number, experts contend that the antiquities market itself is awash with loot.

At times, this has meant trouble for the Aboutaams. The U.S. government returned a funerary slab to Yemen after the Aboutaams consigned it for auction at Sotheby's in 2003. The slab's provenance declared that it was held in a private collection, but investigators determined that it had actually been stolen from a Yemeni museum nearly a decade earlier. One year later, in 2004, a federal court in New York sentenced Hicham Aboutaam to one-year probation and a $5,000 fine after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of misrepresenting the origin of an Iranian drinking vessel on customs documents. That same year, an Egyptian court sentenced his brother, Ali Aboutaam, to fifteen years in prison after finding him guilty in absentia of helping to smuggle antiquities out of the country. Ali Aboutaam remains free, however, and his co-defendants in the case were subsequently acquitted.

More recently, the Aboutaams -- whose client list includes The Metropolitan in New York, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and, of course, the museum in St. Louis -- have been outspoken about the need for dealers to raise their standards and chart a more ethical course through their market's choppy waters.

"We're still figuring out what can be acquired and sold without problems, as opposed to 40 or 50 years ago, when people were much more careless about ownership history," Hicham Aboutaam told The New York Times in 2007. "The question to me now is, where do we draw the line? What if a piece was already in circulation before these new standards? The archaeologists don't have an answer to that. They don't say throw it out, and they don't encourage you to buy it. What are we supposed to do?"

The St. Louis museum purchased the Ka-Nefer-Nefer in 1998, when the Aboutaams' father, the late Sleiman Aboutaam, still ran the company. In subsequent years, museum officials have maintained that their pre-purchase investigation of the mask was "exemplary" and included inquiries with the Art Loss Register, the International Foundation for Art Research and, as an INTERPOL member, the Missouri Highway Patrol. They also hand-delivered an inquiry to Mohammed Saleh, the then-director of the Cairo Museum. The mask came back clean.

"There was no red flag," said David Linenbroker, an attorney for the museum. "Part of the issue here is that the Egyptians didn't keep track of what they had in their storerooms. The fact that there was no red flag raised -- what are you supposed to do?"

Of course, if the Egyptians never reported the mask stolen, it would be unlikely to appear in the Art Loss Register, which was not formally established until 1991 -- some twenty years after the mask first went missing. The museum's due diligence in Egypt also seems to contain a major oversight. When writing to Saleh, who as director of the Cairo Museum oversaw an ocean of such objects, St. Louis curators failed to identify the mask's excavator, Mohammed Zakaria Goneim, and the well-known excavation that unearthed it -- two critical pieces of information. Instead they included a photograph and written description of the mask.

These are among the issues government lawyers raised recently while arguing the court should reconsider their case. Vowing to disclose information about the sellers' "criminal history," the feds characterize the museum's due diligence as "pro forma," charging the museum "knew or was willfully blind to the fact that the Mask was stolen property both before and after its importation."

With its reliance on a 50-year-old eyewitness account and a lengthy sojourn in a "private" Swiss collection, the Ka-Nefer-Nefer's provenance is viewed by some as a case study for the sort of the cooked-up histories that flooded the antiquities market during much of the 20th Century. "It was kind of a joke," Thomas Hoving, the late director of The Met, said when I first showed him the museum's story. Characterizing the ethos of the age, he added, "Everybody went nudge-nudge, wink-wink. You know: 'Oh, yeah, right, "the anonymous Swiss collector." That's good.'"

It was Hoving, after all, who helmed the Met during its 1972 acquisition of the famed Euphronios krater, a 2,500-year-old Greek mixing bowl that the museum returned to Rome after a long tug-of-war with the Italian authorities. The Met's 2008 return of the krater (along with 20 other disputed artifacts) came amid an ongoing wave of similar repatriations, which in recent years has seen the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Princeton University Art Museum, to name but a few, return disputed antiquities.

Plunder still abounds, of course, but the bad old days when American museums could ignore with impunity the ownership claims of other countries may be drawing to a close. This is to say nothing of the long-held archaeological concern that trophy-hunting museums can fuel the black market, robbing antiquities from their original context and impoverishing our understanding of the past. Instead, museums like the Met are increasingly partnering with countries of origin, admitting no fault as they return disputed items in exchange for collaborative archaeological digs and long-term loans.

Perhaps this is why the case of the Ka-Nefer-Nefer seems like such an outlier. For while the court has denied the government's forfeiture bid, it has never questioned the authenticity of the Egyptian records that place the mask in Egypt as late as 1966 -- a date that belies the museum's long-held claim that the mask was in Europe by 1952.

The museum, unsurprisingly, remains skeptical.

"No one knows exactly what happened to that mask and how it left Egypt," said Linenbroker, who added that Egyptian officials have previously admitted their record keeping was "very poor."

"If you look at it from the museum's perspective," he continued, "we know there was a practice that objects were sold. No one ever reported this thing missing, and when we asked before we bought it, nobody raised any red flags. How can you conclude from that that this is a stolen object?"

Nevertheless, St. Louis Art Museum Director Brent Benjamin previously assured Egyptian officials that the museum "takes seriously any suggestion that it illegally or improperly possesses any object." He added that he "looked forward" to reaching "a fair and amicable resolution of this matter." In light of the court's recent decision, it seems uncertain that the museum illegally owns the Ka-Nefer-Nefer. But how about improperly?

Of course, with their legal victory in hand, museum leaders have little incentive to wrestle with this more delicate question. And that's a shame, because to persevere in this litigious and outmoded view of antiquities collecting throws the St. Louis museum out of step not only with its fellow institutions, many of which have negotiated beneficial settlements for similar claims, but also with the American Association of Museums -- which counts the St. Louis institution as a member, and whose updated acquisition guidelines direct members to scrutinize their ancient art collections when "provenance is incomplete or uncertain."

Given the dueling narratives now in the public realm, the Ka-Nefer-Nefer's provenance has never been more uncertain. The question, then, is whether the Saint Louis Art Museum will simply bury its treasure, or finally embrace the sort of equitable resolution that is fast becoming its industry standard.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Malcolm Gay is a writer living in St. Louis. He's currently at work on a book about the integration of the brain with machines.

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For the St. Louis Art Museum, a Legal Victory Raises Ethical Questions

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Should American institutions hold onto dubiously acquired artifacts, even when their countries of origin ask for them back? In certain respects, the tale of the Ka-Nefer-Nefer follows a familiar script: like many disputed antiquities, the Egyptian funerary mask was unearthed last century and quickly vanished, spending nearly 50 years in obscurity before resurfacing on the European art market in the late 1990s.

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"Germany to return ancient sphinx to Turkey" article published in DW on October 3, 2011 by Greg Wiser

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"Germany to return ancient sphinx to Turkey" article published in DW on October 3, 2011 by Greg Wiser

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In 2011, Germany announced that they would return the Sphinx of Hattusa to Turkey. Two sphinxes had been initially brought from Turkey to Germany in 1915. One of the sphinxes was returned in 1924, but the other remained in Germany. During this announcement, however, authorities made it very clear that this in no way set a precedent which could lead to the return of the Bust of Nefertiti to Egypt. Head to Turkey to learn more about the sphinxes.

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The Sphinx of Hattusa, an ancient winged lion sculpture carved in stone, will likely be given back to Turkey, the country where it was uncovered around a century ago.

Returning the sphinx represents "an absolute exception," stressed Hermann Parzinger of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, who has denied parallels between return of the sphinx to Turkey and Egypt's demands for a return of the famous Nefertiti bust, which is on display in Berlin.

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation manages many of Berlin's most famous museums and cultural treasures including the sphinx estimated to be around 3,500 years old.

"I think this is possible because it's an individual case, incomparable to others, so it would not create a precedent for any other restitution demands," said German culture minister Bernd Neumann in a statement.

In contrast to the Nefertiti bust, there are no documents showing who has rightful ownership of the sphinx, Parzinger said, speculating that Berlin may have kept the Sphinx of Hattusa in return for restoration work it did on other artifacts belonging to Turkey.

Parzinger added that the records relating to the bust of Nefertiti show clear ownership rights for Germany.

Sphinx figures have a human head but a lion's body

Deadline in effect

Turkey's culture minister Ertugrul Günay was in the German capital this week and discussed the issue with Neumann, who on Wednesday signaled his readiness to give back the statue. The two also talked about encouraging cooperation between German and Turkish archaeological researchers.

Günay had previously issued an ultimatum on the return of the sphinx. If Germany didn't hand the artifact over by June, the German Archaeological Institute would be forbidden from further excavation work in the Hattusa region where the statue was discovered.

Parzinger criticized the threat against the work of German archaeologists. "This should be seen as a voluntary gesture on Germany's behalf that should strengthen cooperation between us," Parzinger said.

The move doesn't signal readiness to give back the controversial Nefertiti bust

An imposing welcome

The Sphinx of Hattusa was discovered by German archaeologists in 1907. The figure was then brought to Germany in 1915, along with a second sphinx, where both were restored and examined in Berlin's Museum of the Ancient Near East.

The better preserved of the two sculptures was returned to Turkey in 1924, while the Sphinx of Hattusa has been on display in Berlin since 1934.

Uncovered amidst a number of other ruins, the sphinx was once attached to a large city gate and formed part of an imposing welcome to the ancient Hittite capital Hattusa in central Turkey.

Author: Greg Wiser (dapd/AFP)
Editor: Kate Bowen

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Germany to return ancient sphinx to Turkey | DW | 10.03.2011

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The Sphinx of Hattusa, an ancient winged lion sculpture carved in stone, will likely be given back to Turkey, the country where it was uncovered around a century ago.

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Hattusa Sphinx, large stone sculpture dating from 1300-1200 BCE, discovered by German archeologists in 1907, taken in Germany in 1915, one sculpture returned in 1924, one in 2011. 

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Hattusa Sphinx, large stone sculpture dating from 1300-1200 BCE, discovered by German archeologists in 1907, taken in Germany in 1915, one sculpture returned in 1924, one in 2011. 

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The Hattusa Sphinx stood at the entrance to Hattusa, the ancient capital of the Hittite Empire in Turkey. The Turkish government issued a many treats to Germany to insure the sphinx's return, including threatening to expel German archeologists working in Turkey. A successful example of repatriation shows promise, but the Hattusa sphinx are nowhere near as famous as the Benin Bronzes or the Bust of Nefertiti, perhaps another factor in their successful return. Want to learn about more repatriation efforts? Head to Washington, D.C.

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We share high-resolution versions of our original photographs. Contact us for further information and be sure to make a note of the URL of the photos you are interested in.

This page was last modified on 5 May 2017.

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We share high-resolution versions of our original photographs. Contact us for further information and be sure to make a note of the URL of the photos you are interested in. This page was last modified on 5 May 2017.

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National Museum of the American Indian, 4th Street Southwest, Washington, DC, USA

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“The Road to Repatriation: The National Museum of the American Indian works with Native Tribes to bring sacred artifacts home again.” Article from the Smithsonian Magazine by Kenneth R. Fletcher, published November 25, 2008. 

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“The Road to Repatriation: The National Museum of the American Indian works with Native Tribes to bring sacred artifacts home again.” Article from the Smithsonian Magazine by Kenneth R. Fletcher, published November 25, 2008. 

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Through the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, Native Tribes are able to request and receive the return of sacred artifacts and remains. This repatriation is a promising step in recognizing the past in which Native people, land, and culture were destroyed, removed, and exploited for the gain of the European settlers and their descendants. These efforts still are not perfect, as they do not necessarily apply to private collections or in all cases, but efforts continue to right some of these wrongs. Not everyone, however, agrees that art should be repatriated. For another perspective, head to New York.

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The National Museum of the American Indian works with Native Tribes to bring sacred artifacts home again

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Council on Foreign Relations, East 68th Street, New York, NY, USA

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“Culture War: The Case Against Repatriating Museum Artifacts” opinion article in Foreign Affairs published in December 2014 by James Cuno (President/CEO of J Paul Getty Trust). 

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“Culture War: The Case Against Repatriating Museum Artifacts” opinion article in Foreign Affairs published in December 2014 by James Cuno (President/CEO of J Paul Getty Trust). 

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This article argues against repatriation and instead for the value of so-called 'encyclopedic' museums which allow visitors to understand wide swaths of history in one museum visit. This argument stands in opposition to the perspective offered by Lise Ragbir, that museums are currently not constructed for every audience.
Another argument made in the article is that it can be dangerous to return pieces to their original homes when there is risk of destruction. One of the examples Cuno gives is Egypt, which he argues is unable to protect this precious art due to political instability. This narrative continues the colonial and imperialist justification for why the art was taken in the first place, because the countries in which the work was created are unable to take care of it due to inferiority, racial or otherwise. There is value in letting wonderful works for art from all around the world be seen by as many people as possible, but retaining stolen works of art in Western museums, creating a barrier between the original creators of the artwork and their descendants, cannot be the way forward.

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In December 2007, the Italian government opened an exhibition in Rome of 69 artifacts that four major U.S. museums had agreed to return to Italy on the grounds that they had been illegally excavated and exported from the country. Leading nearly 200 journalists through the exhibition, Francesco Rutelli, Italy's then cultural minister, proclaimed, "The odyssey of these objects, which started with their brutal removal from the bowels of the earth, didn't end on the shelf of some American museum. With nostalgia, they have returned. These beautiful pieces have reconquered their souls." Rutelli was not just anthropomorphizing ancient artifacts by giving them souls. By insisting that they were the property of Italy and important to its national identity, he was also giving them citizenship.

Rutelli has hardly been the only government official to insist that artifacts belong to the places from which they originally came. In 2011, the German government agreed to return to Turkey a 3,000-year-old sphinx that German archaeologists had excavated from central Anatolia in the early twentieth century. Afterward, the Turkish minister of culture, Ertugrul Gunay, declared that "each and every antiquity in any part of the world should eventually go back to its homeland."

Such claims on the national identity of antiquities are at the root of many states' cultural property laws, which in the last few decades have been used by governments to reclaim objects from museums and other collections abroad. Despite UNESCO's declaration that "no culture is a hermetically sealed entity," governments are increasingly making claims of ownership of cultural property on the basis of self-proclaimed and fixed state-based identities. Many use ancient cultural objects to affirm continuity with a glorious and powerful past as a way of burnishing their modern political image -- Egypt with the Pharaonic era, Iran with ancient Persia, Italy with the Roman Empire. These arguments amount to protectionist claims on culture. Rather than acknowledge that culture is in a state of constant flux, modern governments present it as standing still, in order to use cultural objects to promote their own states' national identities.

In the battle over cultural heritage, repatriation claims based strictly on national origin are more than just denials of cultural exchange: they are also arguments against the promise of encyclopedic museums -- a category that includes the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York; the British Museum, in London; and the Louvre, in Paris. By presenting the artifacts of one time and one culture next to those of other times and cultures, encyclopedic museums encourage curiosity about the world and its many peoples. They also promote a cosmopolitan worldview, as opposed to a nationalist concept of cultural identity. In an era of globalization that is nonetheless marked by resurgent nationalism and sectarianism, antiquities and their history should not be used to stoke such narrow identities. Instead, they should express the guiding principles of the world's great museums: pluralism, diversity, and the idea that culture shouldn't stop at borders -- and nor, for that matter, should the cosmopolitan ideals represented by encyclopedic museums. Rather than acquiesce to frivolous, if stubborn, calls for repatriation, often accompanied by threats of cultural embargoes, encyclopedic museums should encourage the development of mutually beneficial relationships with museums everywhere in the world that share their cosmopolitan vision. Cultural property should be recognized for what it is: the legacy of humankind and not of the modern nation-state, subject to the political agenda of its current ruling elite.

LESSONS FROM THE LOUVRE

I first visited an encyclopedic museum more than 40 years ago. Walking through the Louvre as a young, traveling student, drawn to different things that caught my eye, I came across an alabaster bust of a praying figure from the ancient Near East. It was an armless torso with a head, a long, flowing beard, and one eye inlaid with shell and another just an empty hole. An inscription carved into the statue revealed that it was dedicated to a goddess on behalf of a Mesopotamian king by his vassal Eshpum more than 4,000 years ago.

The small figure was wholly foreign to me, yet I was captivated. I imagined that I was looking at the statue as its original owner must have done -- and then, not just its original owner but everyone since who had seen, admired, and protected it until it came into the museum where it has been preserved for centuries for all to see. I sensed that I was but one person in a long line of admirers attracted to the figure's magic, all the way back to Eshpum.

This is the power and promise of encyclopedic museums. By preserving and presenting examples of the world's cultures, they offer their visitors the world in all its rich diversity. And in doing so, they protect and advance the idea of openness and integration in a changing world. Over the last three decades, more people have moved across or within national borders than at any point in human history, straining the very contiguity and definition of nation-states, which are now less politically defined and territorially circumscribed than ever before. But all too often, as a result, governments seek fixed national cultures to shore up their hold on their states' identities. They focus on what the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (citing Sigmund Freud's "narcissism of small differences") called "new incentives for cultural purification as more nations lose the illusion of a national economic sovereignty or well being." This kind of promotion of cultural purity, borne of uncertainty, can produce dangerous, often violent xenophobia.

Appadurai was expanding on the ideas of the literary critic and theorist Edward Said, who also examined the formation of national cultural identities. In an essay published in 2000, Said concluded that "the notion of an exclusionary civilization . . . is an impossible one." Instead, he insisted that the more important question is whether "we want to work for civilizations that are separate or whether we should be taking the more integrative, but perhaps more difficult, path, which is to try to see them as making one vast whole whose exact contours are impossible for one person to grasp, but whose certain existence we can intuit and feel." This principle is exactly what encyclopedic museums encourage: understanding the intertwined nature of different cultures that are more similar than they are different, the result of centuries of contact through trade, pilgrimage, and conquest.

Yet this history allows critics to see encyclopedic museums as imperial instruments and contemporary agents of historical imbalances of power by which stronger nations continue to enrich themselves at the expense of weaker ones. But such a view fails to account for the complexity of empire. "Partly because of empire," Said wrote, "all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic." That applies not just to European imperialism; it goes as far back as the Mongol and Mughal empires and the empires of ancient Greece and Egypt. If one goes looking for evidence of empire in the collections of encyclopedic museums, one could find it everywhere. Empire is a fact of history, and history is on display in encyclopedic collections.

RETURN TO SENDER?

If the small alabaster sculpture I first encountered in the Louvre years ago were discovered today, it would almost certainly be claimed by Iran as national property. A French archaeological delegation excavated it in Susa, the modern Iranian city of Shush, at the turn of the twentieth century. At that time, in an arrangement with the Persian government, the French team had rights to all the objects it excavated, provided that it compensated the government for any gold or silver. The country's 1930 Conservation of Antiquities Act changed those terms: if the state discovered excavated objects directly, it could appropriate them all; if foreign excavators discovered them, the state could choose up to ten objects of value and divide the rest equally with the foreign excavating team.

In 1972, new legislation outlawed such divisions and gave the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research authority over all excavations in the country. In 1985, the government established the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization and charged it with surveying, registering, and conserving all archaeological sites and artifacts in the country. In 1998, the government went even further, passing a law that gave the organization the authority to take "necessary measures to identify and restitute Iran's cultural properties, at national and international levels."

Egypt, Italy, Turkey, and many other states made similar legal arrangements with archaeologists a century or more ago -- instituting the practice of partage, or the sharing of finds -- and then experienced similar evolutions in their cultural property laws. These modern laws have often asserted living relationships between modern nation-states and the ancient civilizations that long preceded them. In 1971, for example, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran's last shah, held an opulent celebration in the ancient city of Persepolis to commemorate the anniversary of the founding, 2,500 years earlier, of the Persian monarchy by Cyrus the Great, explicitly identifying his own decadent reign with the glories of that ancient empire.

More than half of the 192 member nations of the un have laws that either grant the state ownership of ancient objects found within their borders or restrict their export without state approval. Most of these laws were passed after 1970, the year UNESCO adopted a convention against the illicit trade of archaeological artifacts. Two of the most contentious ongoing repatriation claims involve objects removed from Greece and Egypt, respectively, long before 1970: the Parthenon Marbles (also known as the Elgin Marbles), a collection of Greek sculptures and architectural pieces that a British ambassador acquired and shipped to London between 1801 and 1812 and that now reside in the British Museum, and the bust of Nefertiti, which was brought to Berlin after it was discovered by German archaeologists in 1912 and is now held by Berlin's Neues Museum.

The marbles were removed from the Parthenon and other buildings in Athens' Acropolis complex with the permission of the reigning Ottoman authorities and have been on display in the British Museum since 1817. Greece didn't pass a law governing antiquities and ancient objects until 1834. When it achieved its independence from the Ottomans, in 1829, Greece made the Acropolis its national symbol, then removed all non-Athenian additions to the citadel's buildings, including remnants of a Byzantine church, an Orthodox and Roman Catholic cathedral, and a mosque. (The German architect in charge of the project pledged that "all the remains of barbarity will be removed.") Still, the Greek government has persistently claimed that the marbles' return would "restore the unity" of the Parthenon.

The bust of Nefertiti has been in Berlin since 1913, when Egypt, although nominally a province of the Ottoman Empire, was effectively ruled by the British. Egyptian governments have petitioned Germany for the bust's return since the 1920s. Germany has always refused, claiming that the bust was legally removed as part of a division of finds between the German excavating team and Egyptian officials. In December 2009, the director of Berlin's Egyptian Museum (the collection of which is part of the Neues Museum) presented historical documents, including a protocol signed by the German excavator and the Egyptian Antiquities Service, authorizing the bust's removal. Egyptian authorities alleged that the excavator misrepresented the bust's importance in the protocol to deceive the Egyptian authorities and get it out of Egypt -- a charge the German government and museum authorities have consistently denied.

In these and other disputes, the UNESCO convention of 1970 has encouraged countries' calls for repatriation. But the convention does not override national cultural heritage regulations that predate 1970, nor is it itself a law. It is a binding agreement among its 115 signatory countries to regulate the trade in antiquities and prevent their looting and illicit trade. Adherence to the terms of the convention was lax in its early years, as museums and individual collectors acquired antiquities without careful consideration of their proper legal status or provenance.

A major shift occurred in 2008, when the Association of Art Museum Directors decided to bring its acquisition policies in line with the UNESCO charter. Nearly 200 directors of leading museums in the United States, Canada, and Mexico agreed that museums "should not normally acquire archaeological materials and ancient art without provenance demonstrating that the object was out of its country of modern discovery prior to or legally exported therefrom after November 17, 1970."

The decision was largely a response to scandals involving stolen antiquities, which provide a powerful argument for repatriation. In the late 1990s, Swiss and Italian police raided the Geneva warehouse of Giacomo Medici, an Italian art dealer, and found photographs and documents revealing his extensive involvement in the illegal sale of antiquities. A number of U.S. museums that had acquired objects through Medici were implicated. In fact, it was the Medici scandal that eventually led the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Princeton University Art Museum to send those 69 objects back to Rome in 2007.

CLAIM GAME

Although the UNESCO convention has helped crack down on the illegal trade in antiquities and led to the rightful repatriation of illicitly acquired art, it has also inspired many governments to make combative and sometimes dubious claims for restitution. As Zahi Hawass, Egypt's then long-serving antiquities minister, said in 2010, "We will make life miserable for museums that refuse to repatriate."

And states are not alone in these efforts. UNESCO, despite what is says about cultural fluidity, has joined with nation-states to assist in the repatriation of cultural objects on the grounds that they represent countries' exclusive national heritages. Its repatriation and restitution committee has a broad mandate to facilitate bilateral negotiations for the return of "any cultural property" that a state deems to have "fundamental significance from the point of view of the spiritual values and cultural heritage of [its] people." Claims can apply to any object that was taken out of a country through "colonial or foreign occupation or as a result of illicit appropriation." The International Council of Museums, a nongovernmental organization with formal relations with UNESCO and the UN's Economic and Social Council, has a similarly all-embracing directive. The council instructs any museum with an object in its collection that is subject to a repatriation claim to "take prompt and responsible steps to cooperate in its return."

But individual countries alone determine when something is part of their cultural heritage: there is no international institution with the authority to make that determination. A national government or state-backed entity can even declare a preceding state's or regime's self-proclaimed national cultural property idolatrous and destroy it, and there is nothing any other country or any international agency can do to stop it. In 2001, UNESCO tried in vain to prevent the Taliban from demolishing the Bamiyan Buddhas, two monumental sixth-century statues carved into a cliff in central Afghanistan. Not even a meeting between UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and representatives of the Taliban leader could spare the statues.

Since that notorious attack, threats to the world's cultural heritage have only become more common. UNESCO lists sites where what it calls "emergency actions" to protect cultural heritage are needed; the list currently includes places in Egypt, Haiti, Iraq, Libya, Mali, and Syria where cultural property is threatened by either armed conflict or, in the case of Haiti, natural disaster. These actions, led by UNESCO, assess and document the extent and severity of the damage to, for example, the Roman-era ruins of the ancient desert city of Palmyra, in Syria, and Aleppo's Old City, both designated as UNESCO World Heritage sites and both damaged in 2012 in fighting between the Syrian army and rebels in the ongoing Syrian civil war, and Egypt's Museum of Islamic Art, in Cairo, which was damaged in a bombing claimed by Islamist militants in January.

SPREAD THE WEALTH

Contrary to their stated intent, countries that make political claims on historical objects are not helping protect their cultural heritages. Since the rise in cultural property laws, many such objects have become concentrated in a few places. Insurance companies know this is a bad idea. Political instability and natural disasters can threaten cultural property anywhere -- whether it's the more than 4,000 medieval manuscripts destroyed by Islamist militants in Mali in 2013 or the galleries and art collections in New York City damaged by flooding during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Allowing the world's museums to share cultural property through loans or acquisitions would reduce some of these risks.

Governments and international agencies that value the protection of cultural property and the principle of cultural diversity should speak out in favor of a robust program of exchange among museums around the world. They should also discourage frivolous restitution claims from individual governments and promote the responsible sharing of collections from encyclopedic museums with museums in places that themselves have no encyclopedic museums. Given the political sensitivities of many governments, this is most likely to happen through loans of cultural objects rather than through their acquisition.

Unfortunately, not every museum sees the value in lending. There are risks with it, to be sure: the possibility of damage during transportation or from changes in environmental conditions, not to mention political instability. But over the long term, these risks can be mitigated through measures to increase the ability of smaller museums to properly care for objects of great value.

For encyclopedic museums to fulfill their promise of cultural exchange, they should be established everywhere in the world where they do not now exist. And existing encyclopedic museums should aid in their development. Already, there are laudable examples of how great museums in wealthy countries can foster a more comprehensive kind of cosmopolitanism. The British Museum established a program in 2008 to promote partnerships with institutions in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. In addition to loaning collections and exhibitions from British museums, it focused on training: in conservation, curating, and archiving. In all, some 29 countries were involved. The program was supported by the British government's Department for Culture, Media, and Sport. But after three years, the British government cut the program's funding. The partnerships continue on a smaller scale supported by grant funding, including from the Getty Foundation.

This process of exchange and cooperation should build trust among museums and national authorities. It will be a long, slow process, but if successful, it would lay the foundation for a greater understanding of the values represented by the encyclopedic museum: openness, tolerance, and inquiry about the world, along with the recognition that culture exists independent of nationalism. These ideas can flourish everywhere, not only in the United States and Europe but wherever there is a spirit of inquiry about the world's rich and diverse history -- and venerable or new museums to foster that interest -- from Marrakech to Nairobi, Abu Dhabi to Mumbai, Shanghai to Mexico City. Examples of how such collaboration has worked include two recent exhibitions at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, in Mumbai: The Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia: A New Beginning, organized by the British Museum, and Flemish Masterpieces From Antwerp, organized in collaboration with the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp. Potential future collaboration could involve, perhaps, Chinese or Kenyan curators arranging an exhibition drawn entirely from the diverse collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the J. Paul Getty Museum, to be shown, respectively, at the Palace Museum, in Beijing, or at the Nairobi Gallery, in Nairobi.

But this more open future mostly depends on individual governments' setting aside their nationalist claims and encouraging among their citizens a cosmopolitan view of the world's many different cultures. Then, perhaps, more young students will have the experience I had in the Louvre some 40 years ago: a powerful and ancient object will enlarge their world, forever provoking curiosity about another time and place.

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In December 2007, the Italian government opened an exhibition in Rome of 69 artifacts that four major U.S. museums had agreed to return to Italy on the grounds that they had been illegally excavated and exported from the country.