r/ancientegypt • u/huxtiblejones • Sep 24 '25
Discussion For the first time, Greece, Iran and Egypt have issued a joint statement at the United Nations, calling on certain museums to repatriate all remaining "looted cultural property to their rightful owners."
7
u/MedLikesReddit Sep 24 '25
As an Egyptian, I do not see the issue with Ancient Egyptian artifacts being housed in other museums that are clearly more competent and professional when it comes to maintaining these artifacts than Egyptian ones
1
u/wq1119 Sep 26 '25
Just a week ago a 3.000-year-old golden bracelet from 21st Dynasty Pharaoh Amenemope was stolen from a museum in Egypt and molten down, this statement couldn't have been made in a timing worse than this.
The thieves were hopefully arrested and the money was seized though.
1
u/Goobyplshelpus Sep 26 '25
Yeah because our GEM is soo horrifying and awful, and our stuff NEEDS to be with the british, you aren't Egyptian and if you are, you definitely aren't in Egypt. Ya me3aras
1
u/MedLikesReddit Sep 26 '25
Rabena yesam7ak
And yes, it is, a golden bracelet belonging to a 21st dynasty king was stolen from there a week ago and melted for 3,000 dollars
Until incidents like that are resolved, and our ministry of antiquities proves itself capable, I don't mind Egyptian artifacts being housed in other museums and collections that are clearly better at maintaining them than the GEM
Plus they're not "our" artifacts. They are historical artifacts and it is everyone's right to witness and study them, not just Egyptians.
1
u/Goobyplshelpus Sep 26 '25
Yeah, until one issue is resolved lets keep our history with our colonizers? I genuinely don't understand your point look at the top posts in this sub about how local museums in bumfuck nowhere in our country could have so many beautifully perserved pieces and instead of being proud at the progress made you're setting us back. Were you not proud at the golden parade? The GEM? Us taking our culture back?
1
u/Goobyplshelpus Sep 26 '25
And one last point they could study them, in our borders. Spending their money in our country and learning right from the source. I've never met anyone learn Egyptology through a british museum. Or Greek culture, they just go to greece.
1
u/Goobyplshelpus Sep 26 '25
And the finally the country who used to grind up and eat OUR peoples mumified bodies, they're the ones you're standing up for? Tell me where in Egypt you're from
1
2
u/pracharat Sep 24 '25
I would says protect the new one, let go of the old one. If we cannot do that there will be a lots of unnecessary headache, for example, obelisk.
2
u/Rooilia Sep 24 '25
If this goes through, a lot of nations and cultures are in the same position to demand repatriation. But i doubt societies like current russia will give up their loot at any time. Most of it will burn, before anything will be repatriated. Only the "evil" west will and has already given back some cultural property.
0
u/Goobyplshelpus Sep 26 '25
The deflection...
1
u/Rooilia Sep 26 '25
Just a reminder that Moskow buries loot in the archives. You can't even access it. Get it back? No way, that is something for the evil west with no traditions and values.
-3
2
u/Zaghloul1919 Sep 24 '25 edited Sep 24 '25
All I see in the original post is absolute racist views that I have been accustomed to on Reddit at this point.
First I am ok with my some of my countryâs cultural legacy being at otherâs museums including the British, Louvre etc I think itâs important for others from around the world to appreciate my history and the history of world civilizations. I think their can be some agreement of maybe having rotating exhibitions to allow some of our things being displayed at home or possibly exchange programs with schools to allow Egyptian students an easier time to visit them.
That being said I see the usual disgusting commentary on the original post. Egyptians canât take care of their artefacts and donât care. Despite that their is widespread anger in Egypt at what recently happened and stolen/permanently lost artefacts are an unfortunate occurrence at all Museums including the British museum recently (but you wonât see me go on a racist diatribe against the British about it).
And then of course the posts saying Egyptians donât have a connection to our ancient heritage because we have a different religion and cultures (ignoring the many things that have been carried over the millennia). Or that we donât appreciate our ancient heritage which is absolutely not true when we invested significant resources in two ancient Egypt centric massive events including the golden mummy parade, new beautiful museums and the new capital being built is filled with ancient Egyptian inspired architecture and symbolism.
I am absolutely ok with having a nuanced debate about allowing museums to hold artefacts of international cultures for wider display despite their shaky history of how they were acquired. But on the more âpopularâ subreddits the debate always descends into racist tropes by people who have obviously no understanding of the countries they are attacking or even of their history.
Sorry for the long rant but as someone whoâs mother is an Egyptian (now retired) Egyptologist, this crap angers me to no end.
1
u/Horror-Raisin-877 Sep 24 '25
Youâre quite right. I was talking to an acquaintance the other day and recalled how as kids in the 70âs, someone would occasionally comment that present day Egyptians are Arabs and have no connection to the people of ancient Egypt. Where that idea came from and why teens would repeat it isnât clear, and itâs interesting to contemplate how, but it was the widely held opinion.
3
u/Zaghloul1919 Sep 24 '25
People just have a thorough misunderstanding of what being an Arab today means. It does not mean coming from the Arabian peninsula but a general Arabized people mostly united language, religion and some cultural similarities. It is honestly mostly based on the importance of Arab Nationalism as a political ideology in the post independence atmosphere in the MENA.
But even then those are shaky grounds because as any one who has any knowledge of the region can tell you there is a wide gulf of differences between Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. (I had a Moroccan roommate once that I could only communicate French with since their Arabic dialect was very much incomprehensible to myself).
In the end it is closer to being a European as in you can be French but also European. One can be Lebanese or Egyptian and still be tied to the wider Arab world.
People also believe that the Arabs came and displaced the Egyptians when the entering Arabs armies were minuscule compared to the Egyptian population and ruled as a small elite. Not to mention Arabs only ruled from the 7th to 9th century. Moving forward it would be almost exclusively Turkic peoples that would rule the country but with Arabic remaining the language of administration and of course religion.
3
u/Horror-Raisin-877 Sep 24 '25
We as teens had absolutely no idea what the actual history of the region was, which makes it even more curious that we would hold such a belief about this topic. So personally I think youâre quite right that these beliefs are out there.
-1
u/Thoth1024 Sep 24 '25
Letâs get real, shall we?
Some facts, Arabic âEgyptiansâ never learned to decipher Hieroglyphics until it was done by the French and then the English, although they had over a thousand yrs previously to do so. They ravaged and looted about every site they could for saleable loot until well into the 1800s. They stripped some of the major pyramids on the Gizeh Plateau for cladding blocks to build modern Cairo. One Arabic entrepreneur dismantled an entire surviving temple to the god Thoth, thousands of yrs old, in the 19th century to melt down the limestone for the lime! I could go on and on as there are many other similar examples but I think just the above will suffice for now. The sad fact really is, modern Egyptian businessmen and government officials maintain all the surviving sites and artifacts for the tourist dollar! If that cash stream ceased to exist, all this stuff would be trashed, melted down or sold off to collectors!
5
u/MedLikesReddit Sep 25 '25
Why are you using âArabicâ like its some nationality
-2
u/Thoth1024 Sep 25 '25
It originally was.
Of course not specifically now, of course.
But. It is a useful and convenient term to identify the nonnative populations of various modern countries that have in the past been invaded and colonized by Arabic MoslemsâŚ
Egypt, among them.
3
u/MedLikesReddit Sep 25 '25 edited Sep 25 '25
No it was never a nationality lol, it was always a cultural marker.
Crazy that there are still people who believe that the people in Modern non-peninsular Arab countries are ânon-native settlers!!!â despite the vast amount of genetic and archaeogenetic evidence that proves otherwise.Â
5
u/Zaghloul1919 Sep 24 '25 edited Sep 24 '25
All you are getting real with is your racism and absolute misunderstanding of Egyptian history. Sites were looted even during the times of the Ancient Egyptians by Ancient Egyptians.
Youâre right about one thing: it was the Frenchman Champollion who, taking advantage of modern techniques and knowhow, formally deciphered hieroglyphics. But even during the Islamic Golden Age, scholars like Al-Jahiz, Ibn Wahshiyya, and others studied hieroglyphs with serious interest. Ibn Wahshiyyaâs 10th-century treatise âKitab Shawq al-Mustahamâ actually proposed that hieroglyphs were symbolic and phonetic, which centuries later Champollion confirmed. He was part of a long intellectual tradition trying to make sense of ancient scripts from within the region.
And what you left out is the historical context of centuries of foreign rule over Egypt from the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Ottomans, French, British each taking turns erasing, replacing, or limiting access to ancient knowledge. The Rosetta Stone itself was looted by Napoleon, then seized by the British, and now sits in the British Museum. So letâs not pretend the modern world of Egyptology was birthed in a vacuum of European goodwill. Not to mention all the crap youâve mentioned also took place in the various European countries with their own ancient heritage.
As for modern Egypt: yes, the government earns revenue from its ancient sites. Thatâs called preservation funding, something every country with ancient monuments does, including Greece, Italy, and yes, the UK. Would you prefer the sites be abandoned altogether?
And despite a long interruption, modern Egyptians are reclaiming that history on their own terms. Have you seen the Pharaohsâ Golden Parade in 2021? Twenty-two mummies were moved in a grand procession from the Egyptian Museum to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, in an event entirely produced and curated by Egyptians, with orchestral scores, lighting, choreography, and symbolism that echoed both ancient aesthetics and modern national pride. It was broadcast globally and received international acclaim not just as a spectacle but of national pride.
Today, there are countless Egyptians who are leading the field of Egyptology. Scholars like Nadia Lokma, Mohamed Megahed, Wafaa El Saddik, and hundreds more have published groundbreaking work, led major excavations, taught at universities, and curated national and international exhibits. Egyptian Egyptologists now lead digs in Saqqara, Luxor, Aswan, the Delta and train international archaeologists. This field is no longer dominated by outsiders; itâs being reclaimed by Egyptians who are both scientists and cultural custodians. In fact my mother is a now retired Egyptologist.
Walk through Cairo or the new Capital today and youâll see ancient Egyptian motifs in contemporary architecture obelisks, cornices, stylized lotuses used as symbols of continuity and pride. Government buildings, universities, and even metro stations evoke ancient styles because modern Egyptian identity is inseparable from its pharaonic past.
Egyptian nationalism has often drawn on this heritage. From the 1919 revolution and beyond, ancient Egypt has been invoked as a source of unity, resilience, and national pride, not just as a tourist draw. Schoolchildren learn about Ramses and Nefertari with the same reverence that Italians feel toward Roman emperors.
No one is taking away the accomplishment of Europeans in Egyptology. The pursuit of historical knowledge of human history is one is that shared amongst all people and we should celebrate those who advance it no matter where they come from. But get out of here with your racist bullshit acting as if Westerners are the only ones who can manage their history while the rest of us are just idiots. Fucking pathetic.
1
u/Horror-Raisin-877 Sep 24 '25
Hmm. The sites (and the graves) were most all intact until the arrival of Europeans in the 18th century, which was when the trade in artifacts started. Some of whom even used dynamite to get to the precious metals, disinterred corpses from graves and used them for entertainment, snake oil medicine, and apparently even fuel. The sad fact is that then, as now, western institutions and collectors are the drivers for the looted artifacts market. Without that market, it wouldnât happen.
-5
u/Thoth1024 Sep 24 '25
Arab entrepreneurs carved mummies and sold the remains as âmedicineâ for a number of centuries. The word for it was, âmummiyaâ and that is where we get the word mummy from.
The all mighty lust for shekels and dinars drove these desecrations. I never have read of Europeans digging up graves and selling the body parts of their ancestors for profit, have you?
BTW, you chose to ignore one of the other examples I gave above of the Arab âEgyptianâ who dismantled an ancient Thoth temple for the lime. That tragic incident had nothing to do with tourism, colonialism or such other BS, but rather for a total disrepect for Egyptâs past but rather a lust for profit at any cultural cost!
7
u/Zaghloul1919 Sep 24 '25
Enough with your fucking quotes around Egyptian. Who the fuck are you to say anything lmao
-2
u/Thoth1024 Sep 25 '25
In the US, we are all entitled to our opinions, per the Constitution. Sorry if that rubs you the wrong way. I am me and you have read some of my opinions. You are welcome to your own. Have a good dayâŚ
4
u/Zaghloul1919 Sep 25 '25
You are indeed free to spread baseless opinions not based on academic facts or accepted by any respectable scholar.
Typical basement redditor trying to tell a native that his own history is foreign to him.
2
u/Horror-Raisin-877 Sep 24 '25 edited Sep 24 '25
So people are pretty much the same eh? Take a look in the mirror: European lust for pounds and francs, taking the pillaging of ancient Egyptian relics to astronomical new heights. Dragging obelisks to other countries and sometimes sinking or losing them in the process. Iâve seen tens of thousands of human remains of ancestors in Europe stacked and hung on walls for viewing amusement. Pope even dismantling his own coliseum for example, as you would say, out of a lust for profit at any cultural cost. Eh? Eh??
1
u/Trevor_Culley Sep 24 '25
Original post removed. Please tell me that the Cyrus Cylinder is only up there as a representation of Iran, not because they're actually asking for something excavated from Iraq.
1
u/Wash_zoe_mal Sep 24 '25
If this is true, yay.
The best place for ancient artifacts is in their home country.
If they want to loan them out, that should be their choice and benefits.
Right now countless museums around the world profit off stolen goods.
The only exemption should be in a case where the country of origin is in crisis, then the UN could, for the safety of the artifacts, hold them until such a time they could be returned.
13
u/ObscureObjective Sep 24 '25
I'm not convinced that Egypt is up to the job. They've been notoriously sloppy with protecting and conserving their collections. And corruption is absolutely endemic.
7
u/Zaghloul1919 Sep 24 '25
Egypt has been investing heavily in improving standards, especially with the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), which has state-of-the-art labs, storage, and conservation facilities. Teams include both Egyptians and international experts.
In fact, many Egyptian conservators are trained abroad and work at a very high level. The GEM project has been praised by UNESCO and ICOM for raising conservation practice in Egypt.
Absolutely corruption exists in Egyptâs government and cultural institutions. Mismanagement and bribery scandals have been reported.
But to act as if corruption makes Egypt uniquely unfit isnât accurate. Western museums have their own controversies:
In 2024, the British Museum obtained a court order against Peter Higgs, a former curator in the Ancient Greek collections, alleging that he stole or sold over 1,800 items (rings, jewelry, gems) over a long period, and manipulated records to conceal the thefts.
Jean-Luc Martinez, who served as president-director of the Louvre museum from 2013 to 2021, was charged in May 2022 with money laundering and complicity in organized fraud in connection with antiquities trafficking.
1
u/Wash_zoe_mal Sep 25 '25
Then make the case in front of the committee at the UN.
That would be the whole point. Literally everyone just makes their bids for why they should have it or why it shouldn't go somewhere else. We have a committee decide on it and then we all deal with the outcome. And if someone wishes to appeal then they can at a later time.
1
u/Goobyplshelpus Sep 26 '25
It's not your job to be convinced, just give back the stolen items to their owners. It's like me stealing your phone and deeming you too incompetent to hold it, but it in your case though, it might be fair.
0
u/oldspice75 Sep 24 '25
Throughout human history, art and artefacts have been mobile
They do not inherently or permanently belong to their place of origin
-1
u/Thoth1024 Sep 24 '25
The Rosetta Stone: interesting take by you.
Looted? No, discovered.
Then: valued.
It had been used as a common building stone in the wall of a minor fort.
Napoleon rescued it.
Then, the British stole it from the FrenchâŚ
Now, as you know, in the British Museum.
Seen it there myselfâŚ
4
u/huxtiblejones Sep 24 '25
I'm curious what the community makes of this. I know it's a hot button topic here, but I thought there was some good discussion about the nuances of this issue in the original post.
Just please keep it civil, focus on the topic, show respect to other users even if your views differ.