The Recent Repatriation Laws Set Up By Egypt And The Subsequent Demands From The United States

As stated in an article from debate.org, artifacts help people understand about other countries’ culture and history, in addition to their own. For example, in many American museums, such as the Field Museum, contain artifacts from other countries and civilizations. The Field Museum has ancient Mongolian clothing and jewelry. Families visit this museum every day and they learn more about Mongolian culture and artifacts. Should these artifacts be returned to Mongolia? Should we lack knowledge about their history and just be knowledgeable about ours? Similarly, as stated by debatewise.org, the most amount of people should be able to access the artifacts. For example, Americans might not find the old American flag interesting, so they wouldn’t go to a museum that only has American artifacts. They would want a variety of cultures and civilizations to take a look at. If most people think this way, there would be a larger amount of people at museums with other countries’ artifacts in them. So, artifacts should be accessible to as many people as possible who want to learn more about them and look at them. Mineralarea.edu suggests a valid point- that archaeologists worked so hard to find these artifacts.

Ancient artifacts are the symbols of human civilization. All of them are priceless and cannot be measured by currency value. Repatriate is a controversial problem because of the various reasons. For instance, the aggressor took all of the captures back to their home countries and showed them to the public, during the war. Voyagers took other countries’ artifact to prove they had been in that place. Archeologists, anthropologists, and scientists took the antiquities back to their university for research. Politicians used the regulation to move away a relic as decrease the power of a competitor. Thieves had stolen someone’s important items or expensive objects in a tomb in order to sell to the private collectors. It can’t be right to steal the items that belong to other people. When the owner found out the items were stolen, and then they hoped they could get them back. That was how repatriated started. Some antiquities were transported to the country that they do not belong to. Thus, there are some people think those ancient artifacts should be returned to the original country because it involves moral issues. However, some people think they shouldn’t be returned because they are the spoils of the wars. Most antiquities were looted from other places, which are showed in the museum. So which countries do they belong to? However, In my opinion, museums don’t have to return the antiquities to the original

Museums are filled with unique,historical artifacts that are precious to our history throughout the world. These “traveling exhibits” give people around the world an opportunity to see how our ancestors lived in many different regions of the world. Many artifacts are far away from their country of origin 7.In the articles “Bring Them Home”and “Museums Preserve the Cultures of the World,” people argue that museums should return certain artifacts to its original country, while others believes it’s only right to keep them considering the originating country rightfully sold those artifacts.In my opinion, countries should bring some artifacts back to their originating country.

Countless art has been sought-after throughout history. Explorers, scientists, art collectors, politicians, and entrepreneurs from Western nations have sought out and removed art from the lands of great civilizations, often with the assistance and participation of local people and governments. Even as cultural property faces immediate danger today in conflict zones like Syria and Mali, there is circumstantial evidence that some nations are awakening to the political and foreign policy benefits that can flow from the repatriation of cultural patrimony. While on a different scale from World War II, historic structures, religious monuments, and other priceless ancient times continue to suffer collateral damage and manipulation in armed conflict. Relics have been stolen, smuggled and sold in what is a reported multibillion dollar underground market. They have become the illicit prizes of private collectors and the subject of legal claims against museums. Of the countless museums subject to legal claims, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City happens to be one of them. “The Metropolitan Museum has acquired thousands of works and objects of art from the antiquities”. “For the past several years, the government of Turkey has warned U.S. and foreign museums (including The Metropolitan Museum of Art), that unless ancient objects from Turkish soil are given up on demand, Turkey will stop lending artworks” (The Committee for Cultural Policy, 2015). Turkey continues to up the

Lubar states that “large museums have so much in storage; why not transfer some of those collections to smaller museums, where they would be eagerly put on display? Even more radical why not sell some and use the proceeds to fund the work that museums should be doing” (146). Initially, this idea does seem radical. Large metropolitan museums giving their collections away is not something that is often done. Lubar explains that “there are more than a billion objects in American museum collections” (4). This number is so vast that is impossible to reasonably conceive. Because of this, there can only so many artifacts that are on display at once thus leaving countless others stuck in storage never seeing the light of day. Smaller museums that do not have the budget to collect could potentially benefit from larger museums deaccessioning items.

Antiques, they are hundreds, maybe thousands years old, but what if someone just took them from you. You would want them back, right? This valuable prized possession, someone just, stole. Well, imagine it a bit more extreme. That has been the major problem in Egypt for many years. Britain, France, and other surrounding countries have been stealing major antiquities from Egypt illegally for a long time. These countries should give back Egypt’s antiquities because, they deserve to be in their country of origin, these artifacts represent Egyptian culture, and Egyptian antiquities are not only limited to staying in the pyramids.

To begin, one reason why the museums shouldn’t return the artifacts is because whoever found the artifact has the artifact in their history not the person who owns the land. “Such as when Ponce de León’s ships landed on Florida's east coast near present-day St. Augustine. He claimed this beautiful land for Spain, so Spain has now has Florida in their history” Further, another reason why the museums shouldn’t return the artifacts is because if the countries that want them back want them so bad then why don’t they just pay the countries

The repatriation of cultural artifacts and pieces of art refers to the return of these items to their country of origin. Although this seems to be an overwhelmingly positive action taken to reunite ancient artifacts with their culture, the process can also prevent intercultural blending and encourage cultural segregation. As James Cuno expressed in the supplemental article “To Repatriate or Not to Repatriate, That is the Question….James Cuno’s Case Against Repatriating Museum Artifacts”, returning cultural artifacts to their homeland first entails taking from the country in which they reside. While this seems rather harmless, preventing intercultural fusion could destroy the education of and respect for outside cultures. Because of this, in

Artifacts would be better kept in certain conditions, and some places are not suited to do so. The artifacts that have been here for centuries that are not put in the correct conditions have degraded and some have come to the point of no return, having been broken down and rendered unusable. This could have been prevented, had the artifacts been put in an environment where they could be cared for and enjoyed longer. Many people argue that they should be returned to their place of origin, but is that really worth risking the artifact? They can still be looked at, admired and inspected, just in a better environment.

Is it ethically right for museums to be able to take cultural artifacts from their country of origin? Antiquites should be to their country of origin because in cultures such as Native American tribes described in “Passage 1: Returning Antiquities to Their Countries of Origin in paragraph 4 written by Joyce Mortimer” some of their artifacts are now on display in museums for anyone to see, even though these objects were to be kept private and for religious ceremonies, not for the public eye to see. By museums taking away these objects from such tribes, they now lose a crucial part of their culture which really depicts their qualities and beliefs.

Museums are the most used in preserving history and culture. Artifacts can be stored there while allowing the public a chance to view the artifacts. During the time that the artifacts are there, historians continue research on their finds to better understand items’ past. However, the process can stop due to illegal selling and trading in the black market.The black market allows collectors to buy artifacts from sellers who steal them from museums and excavation. In countries that have corrupt governments,, the amount of items stolen are higher . From the NPR podcast, thieves are becoming huge threats to Iraqi museums, not to mention during the ongoing war there. Some artifacts are destroyed, but their mostly stolen which leaves unanswered questions

If the buying and selling of cultural artifacts does one thing well, it is the destruction of context. In The Ethics of Archaeology (2006), Robert Layton and Gillian Wallace state that “the crime of the undocumented antiquities trade is its undocumented destruction of context” (p. 57). As they point out, this destruction of context can be simple and in some ways benign. Something as simple as the removal of a Byzantine coin being removed from its original context “in a money pouch” to “a museum case or a collector 's coin display board”

I don’t think artifacts should be relocated to museums for many reasons. First, in Machu Picchu someone found treasures and was supposed to be on loan for 12 months, but never got returned. Next, some of the artifacts are grave sight like the Titanic. For example, when the survivors of the Titanic, died they got cremated and had it scattered on the Titanic. Then, the Inca builds a palace for the son of Pachacuti. So, When the artifacts are returning, it is like to bring back family goods.

It was 2011 when Cairo’s Tahir Square erupted with a revolution against the government’s leader, President Hosni Mubarak. Fires caused by the friction from the protesters, the police, and the civilians trying to stop the violence, spread the destruction up to the doorstep of the National History Museum. In a desperate attempt to save the museum and it’s artifacts, civilians linked arms and hands to form a human barrier between the protestors and the country’s national treasures. Despite the brave efforts by those who wanted to protect the museum, 50 relics disappeared that night. Unfortunately those were not the first artifacts to be taken out of Egypt; they only add to the growing number.

These are just a few cases of illegal smuggling of antiques, but even in this small sampling we can see their impact on people and their cultural heritage. The stealing of culturally important icons and the desecration of religious sites, such as the case with the smuggling of mummies in Cairo (BBC News 2008) and the looting of Buddhist sites in Ayutthaya (Akanond 1999), tell us of the little respect these people hold for the items, people, and countries they are stealing from. In the case of ISIS, this looting of historical sites even plays into their terrorism, by violently stripping the people of their heritage in order to both fund and achieve their political goals. As stated in the article, the illegal selling of