An ancient biblical text was seized by the US Government and will returned to Iraq.
Is the safety of this artifact guaranteed?
Is it an international heritage artifact?
Or is it property of iraq with which they can do anything they want to be it preserving it or smashing it?
I remember when one Iraqi sect delighted in destroy artifacts that were christian or even belonged to a different sect of the same religion
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i say bad, but unavoidable
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Don’t send anything back to that hell hole. If they have a hundred years of peace, then they can think about it.
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well, that’s a stretch. when was the last time the US had 100 years of peace?
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Minus Pearl Harbor and a few other small Japanese attacks on the coastline? Since 1890 I think.
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Unavoidable…
Who does this artifact belong to
Does Iraq want the responsibility for this object? Couldn’t the US just buy it for a few million dollars?
That would be a better solution than sending it back, although it seems unlikely. Another better solution could be to hold it in trust in a museum until such a time as Iraq seems stable enough to ensure the safety?
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That is a fantastic solution…
Why the interest of the US sending objects back to almost certain doom?
Is it virtue signaling?
By the same criteria of being anti-smugling, the US has the right to demand that Taiwan send the entire contents not the Palace Museum back to China.
Almost all those artifacts were saved from being smashed in the Cultural Revolution.
I believe artifacts belong in their original location if they can be kept safe.
I remember spending the day in the ancient city of athens. You climb all these steps, trip over rocks only to find when you get to the top a sign that states…
XYZ Statue now resides in the British Museum". Bit of a let down… but the objects are safe.
seems the easy answer, yeah
Hmm, I’d say it is different criteria, I wouldn’t say they were stolen from the mainland, per se
agreed
Peace?
KKK:
The “students” were searching everywhere for these objects. I’m talking carved doors, foo dogs and other stuff.
They were punishing those who tried to save it. They really wanted to destroy the decadent stuff.
Regardless, it was China’s property. It was smuggled out. I have a right to destroy my stuff.
They probably would be safe today. Could China claim their stuff back now? I think they did try before…
It belongs to ROC. CCP took the land but they can’t have our property. They don’t even read traditional Chinese. They took the Chinese name but nothing about them is Chinese.
Plus, have you visited their palace? It’s a disaster. I won’t trust our legacy to those people. They’re ours by right anyways.
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And is Iraq settled? Aren’t there fights for control in some areas? Aren’t there fundamentalist groups who believe not only that other religions’ art and symbolism is bad, even different sects of the same religion is bad as well.
What is the US’s motivation. To protect the art or virtue signal?
Irreplaceable artifacts were destroyed…
It was sad to see them desecrated.
Send it to the Kurdistan area. It’s relatively stable there. Here’s a bad analogy from my recently AZ addled brain; we divorced the woman and took the dog. Yes, she is an alcoholic mess and will probably love it but not take care of it the best, but technically the dog is her’s as she adopted it.
yes, i already agreed with this
I don’t know how much was smuggled out during the cultural revolution, or how much was relocated by the KMT who were the legal guardians of those treasures when they escaped to taiwan, but i’m confident that the best were brought over here before the cultural revolution
technically, it is still china’s property (republic of). i totally agree that the cultural revolution means the taiwanese government should not take seriously CCP demands that the treasures are “returned” (here, there is relevance), but i don’t think it is fair to say they were stolen or smuggled (here, i see a very different situation).
also worth mentioning are these:
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Well, Hobby Lobby’s motivation was to make a buck, and proselytize their religion. That’s why their “museum” was filled with stolen and smuggled antiquities. (I wonder if they still have the animatronic display of that great patron of Protestantism Ann Boleyn in their “Museum of the Bible”? I’m sure Catholics appreciate it.)
As to the original question, look how the Elgin marbles were preserved in Britain from the risk of destruction in war. Aside from the Blitz, I mean.
The Hobby Lobby name rings a bell. Aren’t they notorious for being a bunch of pricks? No surprise that they’ve bene smuggling looted artefacts too.
As for sending it back to Iraq–big nope. They’ve shown they can’t be trusted, what with what happened with ISIS blowing everything up. Put it in a US museum where it’s safe.
Yeah, for now- antiquities belong where they are safe, on the one hand- not only safe, but also available for viewing and research. On the other, you can see where the country of origin could be pissed off at their artworks being looted. Do paintings from other European countries belong in Germany because the Nazis grabbed them?
I know! As well, those dreadful barbarian Americans, desecrating the English language- English, damn it- with their wretched color, neighbor, center, theater and check.
You are talking that it shouldn’t go back.
But that is exactly where it’s going (as led to believe through this brief article).
These, you have to assume are educated people in the field spearheading this.
I’m sure there will be a hearing… or maybe not…
I want to know the driving force, the image is in the minds of these people that gets then out of bed to motivate them to get the works back to Iraq
I imagine the movie trop of the community rallying to save an endangered species only to have it eaten minutes after release.
I picture the agents smirking just after the artifacts are destroyed saying it’s a small price to pay for justice
For those who love artifacts and history, this book is good listen…
https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Monuments-Men-Audiobook/B002V0QHNQ&ved=2ahUKEwjzoqeMx4zyAhWLyIsBHUq1DaEQFjAAegQIDBAC&usg=AOvVaw2P3JXHTfMeEhrBhpmBNgkz
part of it might be as simple as rule-of-law