Loot - Softcover

Waxman, Sharon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805090886 ISBN 13: 9780805090888

Publisher: Times Books, 2009

Synopsis

"Fast-paced and compelling . . . Waxman has an array of wondrous tales to tell . . . Considerable, admirable, and totally absorbing."―The Boston Globe

For the past two centuries, the West has plundered the treasures of the ancient world to fill its great museums, but in recent years the countries where ancient civilizations originated have begun to push back, taking museums to court, prosecuting curators, and threatening to force the return of these priceless objects.

Sharon Waxman brings us inside this high-stakes conflict, from the great cities of the West to Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and Italy, as these countries face down the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. She shows how the actions of a few determined and implacable characters may yet strip these museums of some of their most cherished treasures.

For readers who are fascinated by antiquity, who love to frequent museums, and who believe in the value of cultural exchange, Loot opens a new window on an enduring conflict.

About this title

About the Author

Sharon Waxman is a former culture correspondent for The New York Times and holds a master's degree in Middle East studies from Oxford University. She covered Middle Eastern and European politics and culture for ten years before joining The Washington Post and then The New York Times to report on Hollywood and other cultural news. She is the author of Rebels on the Backlot, and the CEO and founder of The Wrap News.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

It was just like Zahi Hawass to toss a bomb into the middle of someone else’s well-laid plans. On a bright, breezy day in June 2006, dozens of reporters and news crews, cameras, and microphones were lined up at the Field Museum in Chicago for a pleasant and entirely noncontroversial news event: the opening of an exhibit of the treasures of King Tutankhamun, on loan from Egypt for the first time since 1977.

Sitting in the front row, Hawass, the charismatic secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, was braced for a fight. As he listened to remarks by Randy Mehrberg, a spokesman for the show’s corporate sponsor, a billion-dollar electricity corporation called Exelon, he felt himself grow increasingly incensed. Extolling the wonders of ancient Egypt, Mehrberg mentioned that Exelon’s CEO, JohnRowe, was an avid Egyptophile who kept the sarcophagus of a mummy in his office. Hawass, dapper in a suit and tie, wasted no time. He strode to the podium and went straight for the jugular. "No one has a right to have an artifact like that in their office or in their home," he declared indignantly, kicking the exhibit’s benefactor in the gut and stunning the museum’s officials. "How can he sponsor an exhibit like King Tut and keep an artifact like this in his office?" Rowe should surrender the sarcophagus to a museum, Hawass said, or send it back to Egypt. If he didn’t, there would be consequences. What kind of consequences? Hawass had plenty in mind. Never mind that the sarcophagus—a 2,200-year-old wooden coffin with painted designs and hieroglyphs—was Rowe’s private property. Never mind that it had been purchased legally from a reputable dealer. Never mind that Rowe ran one of the biggest utilities in the country and had been a major contributor to President George W. Bush, with whom he was touring power plants on the day of the museum news conference. In this case, none of that mattered. For the next two days, Hawass turned up the pressure; he threatened to pull out of the exhibit, and he warned that he would cut Egypt’s ties to the museum and its partners if Rowe didn’t relinquish the sarcophagus or withdraw Exelon’s sponsorship.

Within the museum, panic ensued. The exhibit was about to open to an expected audience of 1 million visitors, and the story had taken up residence on the

Chicago Tribune

’s front page. By the end of day two, John Rowe blinked. He agreed to loan the piece—an artifact of middling value, not really worthy of the Field Museum’s galleries—indefinitely. You could practically hear the museum administration breathe a sigh of relief: "This has been a very, very happy resolution for everyone," said a spokeswoman. "We’re very pleased." Added an Exelon official, "John loves the Field Museum and is happy to share the piece." Hawass, atlas, was mollified. At a dinner for the opening that night, he was all charm and smiles. "Mr. Rowe is a very nice man," he said. "To accept that the coffin be given to the Field Museum, this will finish the process and make peace with everybody."

Peace? How nice. A sharing kind of word. But peace and sharing are not at all what is in the air around museums these days, nor in the countries that were home to the great civilizations of the ancient world. Instead it has been lawsuits and criminal prosecution, public embarrassment, and bare-knuckled threats. Of late, it’s been much more

like war, a tug-of-war over who should own the ancient artifacts that represent the heritage of humankind. Over the past two hundred years, antiquities and monuments have been ripped from the ground and shipped across the world, and many of these pieces now reside in the vast collections of the great museums of the West. Should they stay where they are—at the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, and elsewhere—exhibited and preserved with care, accessible to avid crowds of visitors from around the world? Or should they return to their countries of origin, whose demands for restitution have grown ever more vociferous, a chorus of dissatisfaction from

across the ancient world?

In April 2007 Zahi Hawass announced that Egypt would seek the loan (though he has also said he seeks the permanent return) of five iconic pieces from museums in Europe and the United States, including the Rosetta Stone and the famed bust of Nefertiti, even as he raises hell over minor pieces such as John Rowe’s. With Greece preparing to open a modern museum at the base of the Acropolis in Athens, its government has renewed its demand for the return of the Elgin Marbles, the sculptures removed from the Parthenon in 1802 by the Earl of Elgin and kept at the British Museum. Italy has waged a sustained campaign against museums, dealers, and collectors for the return of artifacts it claims were illegally excavated and smuggled from the country. That culminated in the two-year criminal trial of the American curator Marion True and, in August 2007, in the agreement by True’s former employer, the J. Paul Getty Museum, to return forty artifacts from its permanent collection.

Is this historic justice, the righting of ancient wrongs from the age of imperialism? Or is it a modern settling of scores by the frustrated leaders of less powerful nations? And why now, all of a sudden, has the issue taken hold with such force? The battle over ancient treasures is, at its base, a conflict over identity, and over the right to reclaim

the objects that are its tangible symbols. At a time when East and West wage pitched battle over fundamental notions of identity (liberator or occupier; terrorist or freedom fighter), antiquities have become yet another weapon in this clash of cultures, another manifestation of the yawning divide. And ironically, it undermines the very purpose of

cultural exchange, of building bridges and furthering mutual understanding.

In some sense, the battle over antiquities is part of an epochal shift. Once upon a time, these objects were tied to the national identity of Western empires. From the sixteenth century forward, European culture became the dominant force in the world, sweeping across continents and destroying past civilizations, while claiming ancient history

for itself. "Never before had one culture spread over the whole globe, "writes the historian J. M. Roberts. This cultural shift was a one-way process. "Europeans went out to the world, it did not come to them, "he adds. Except for the Turks, non-Europeans did not enter Europe. And after conquering foreign cultures, Europe brought back home the trophies that it desired, along with slaves, spices, treasure, and raw materials. The imperial age, beginning in the eighteenth century, culminated in the appropriation of ancient cultures for the glorification of European power. First, classical history—ancient Greece and Rome—were adopted as symbols of refinement and taste, their monuments sought and imitated in the battle for supremacy among competing empires. Then with the dawn of the nineteenth century and the rediscovery of ancient Egypt by Napoleon Bonaparte, mummies and pyramids were the new, must-have status symbols, and this fascination fueled the rise of scientific inquiry into the past. The uncovering of ancient

Mesopotamia and its myriad civilizations followed in subsequent decades, with treasures and monuments brought to the halls of the Western cultural temple—the museum. The twentieth century expanded Western holdings to include the treasures of Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

Today, we live in a different age. As once-colonized nations seek to stand on their own, the countries once denuded of their past seek to asse

About this edition

• Publisher: Times Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0805090886
• ISBN 13: 9780805090888
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432