Egypt and Antiquities

Egypt has a fascinating and unique history. Their “First Kingdom” started about 5,000 years ago. They built and have the only remaining of the “seven ancient wonders of the world” (the Great Pyramids). They dominated the local region for a couple of thousand years. Then they were invaded and dominated by about 7 different outsiders…Greeks, Romans, Persians, French, English, etc. (That is a simple history of 4000 to 5000 years that historians would find disgustingly oversimplified.)

(I love thinking about human history at this scale, where one can think of the history of the US at 1/20th of the time scale of Egypt’s…250 years vs 5000 years. Kind of puts things into a different perspective…we have a long way to go to prove successful!)

Many of Egypt’s ancient treasures were taken by their conquerors. The British Museum, for example, houses more of Egypt’s ancient items than does the Cairo Museum. My initial reaction was that Egypt should be ticked off about such “misappropriations of one’s property.”

I found the reaction of our lecturer, Aki (see below) to be interesting on this point. He said that for most of these “missing” items, it is okay. Egypt actually benefits from having many of its antiquities located elsewhere in the world. People see them and think, “I like these, and want to go to Egypt to see the original sites and see more.” So, perhaps there is a positive from this.

Second point is that many of the foreign Museums have better facilities, with climate control and space to display, than would exist in Egypt for all of the pieces. So for now, it may be better for these items to be outside of Egypt.

However, Aki said that there are 4 specific items that Egypt absolutely wants returned.

His list:
1) The Rosetta stone from British Museum. It showed how to translate hieroglyphics into Latin and Arabic (or something like that). Without this, hieroglyphics might still be a mystery.
2) Beard of the Sphinx. This beard broke off of the Sphinx some thousands of years ago into 3 pieces. Egypt has the middle piece. The British Museum has top and bottom pieces. It would help provide physical support for the Sphinx’s head if it were replaced (the head is estimated to weigh 120 tons) on the current slender neck. (Negotiations have been going on for 27 years to return these pieces to Egypt.)
3) Bust of Queen Nefertiti -from the Berlin Museum. Germans snuck this bust out of Egypt by encasing it is something like plaster and claiming it not to be so special. Some consider this the most beautiful sculpture ever created.
4) Zodiac Sign from the Louvre.