Turkey's ‘stolen’ treasures should be given back
My final days in Turkey approach quickly as I’m in Bodrum now - classical Halicarnassus.
I’ve made a real circle of old Caria this trip - from Izmir to Bodrum. I’m no archaeologist but I’ve spent countless hours hiking the archaeological sites and roaming museums here for these past weeks. Along the way, I’ve seen amazing things and I’ll be headed back to Berlin tomorrow.
The only truly sad thing about this part of the trip is the discovery of how much of this stuff is actually in Berlin, or London, or Paris, or New York, as opposed to here where it belongs. Thousands and thousands of critical artifacts were stolen by German, English, French and American archaeologists during the 19th and 20th centuries and simply shipped back to the Pergamon or other museums in Germany and elsewhere. They belong here, where they were found. I might suggest any number of ways that this should happen, but the simplest rule is if it was found here, it should be returned.
The issue is not a simple one. The fate of the Benin Bronzes, incredible artworks of Nigerian origin looted over one hundred years ago, is now complex. After the Smithsonian returned their holdings to the Nigerian Museum Commission, the Oba, a hereditary monarch, claimed they were his - stalling the transfer of hundreds of other pieces held elsewhere while the ownership is disputed. The Smithsonian will not have a say in the matter, but other holders of these pieces may refuse to hand them over to private ownership - even in Nigeria.
Where origin, provenance, or eventual disposition is in dispute, the problem may be a cloudy one, but some of the more egregious cases do not have these complications.
The origin of the bust of Nefertiti, the stepmother of the Pharoah Tutankhamun, is pretty obvious. It was discovered in Egypt by a German team and transferred to what is now the “Neues Museum” in Berlin. I saw it there last month. In a perfect world its placement would come under the aegis and ownership of the nation of Egypt, and likely be placed in the Cairo Museum. But the Germans won’t give it back.
The friezes that once surmounted the columns of the Parthenon in Athens are sitting in the British Museum, where it has been since it was bamboozled out of Greece by criminal forgery of documents and bribery over a century ago. We not only know where it is from, but we know how it was feloniously obtained. The British refuse to give it back along with countless other Greek treasures similarly looted by British archaeologists and random aristocrats.
Berlin’s Pergamon museum is named after Pergamon, which is in Turkey, and practically all their Greek stuff is from Turkey. They closed the display of the “Pergamon Marbles” for restoration, and opened, in its place, a display of the marvelous market gate from Miletus. Which is in Turkey.
There are questionable places for these things to be, but Turkey is not among them. They own them. They are theirs by right of culture, provenance and most of all, history.
If I've seen nothing else, it’s evidence of the astounding archaeological, curation, and preservation skills of the Turkish academic and governmental community and their tremendous work in making even the most valuable and fragile artifacts available to the random public.
Turkey's treasures are in the hands of foreign museums after being stolen from them for years and the nations that stole them should give them back.
Bruce Anderson is the Dr. Sarah D. and L. Kirk McKay Jr. Endowed Chair in American History, Government, and Civics and Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Florida Southern College. He is also a columnist for The Ledger.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Turkey's ‘stolen’ treasures should be given back
