The vast majority of the recovered items have come from Danish gemstone dealer Dr Ittai Gradel, who first alerted the museum to the thefts in 2021.
Is it me or does it make it sound like they have so much shit they didn’t even realize they were gone?
Side note though, those look beautiful.
I want so badly for someone to steal shit from the British Museum only to give it to its country of origin. Like oh yeah we found the Benin Bronzes but they gave them back to Nigeria. What are they gonna do loot them again?
Hot take but it’s good that the British museum “stole” so much stuff. To quote everyone’s favorite archeologist: ‘This belongs in a museum.’
Not in YOUR museum though, unless it was loaned by the country it belongs to. And to say “oh it’s safer here in our nice white museums” is nothing short of the continued patriarchal attitude that the British have towards other countries and races. You think it’s safer with you? Too bad, it’s not your call to make.
In so many cases that exact sentiment just turned out to be true though. How many ancient artifacts have been destroyed by political/religions extremists? How many more were lost due to neglect or because people tore them apart to use them as building materials? It probably wasn’t right to take them at the time but man, am I glad they took them.
