In a very interesting followup to the amusing story of Lord Elgin’s rocks, on display in the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the current Lord Elgin has given an interview about why he made the decision to return the rocks, along with various other items to Canada.

Most telling is the quote near the end of the video:

It was a pity I felt, that people in Canada were not able to see them & touch them & so on & only hear about them.
There came a moment that there was a place that they could go to, where they would become, as they were in our house a part of our family, they were going to go back to be part of the family that was Canada.

Surely the same now applies to Greece since the building of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens?

As I’ve said before, one wonders whether the Elgin Marbles would already be back in Greece if the Seventh Earl of Elgin hadn’t been forced to sell them when faced with bankruptcy?

Following the Met’s agreement to return nineteen artefacts to Egypt, Egypt hopes that the return of other more significant works may follow.

From:
NPR

Egypt Called; It Wants Its Rosetta Stone Back
by Neda Ulaby
November 14, 2010

This past week, the Metropolitan Museum in New York announced it will return 19 small objects from King Tut’s tomb to Egypt. Now the Egyptians are asking the British to return the Rosetta Stone.

LIANE HANSEN, host: Last week, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced it will return 19 small objects from King Tut’s tomb to Egypt. The museum’s research proved they were stolen.

As NPR’s Neda Ulaby reports, this is part of an increased sensitivity in the museum world towards such objects. Egyptian archeologists hope more significant works may follow.
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After a brief respite from its cloak of scaffolding, the next phase of restoration works has begun on the Acropolis, with the return of the scaffolding to the Propylaia.

From:
The Independent

Greece’s Acropolis in scaffolds as restoration resumes
AFP
Saturday, 13 November 2010

Scaffolding once again appeared on the Acropolis in Athens Thursday as work resumed after a brief pause on a decades-long restoration project.

“New scaffolding has been constructed on the central part of the Propylaea to restore the original marble,” said Mairi Ioannidou, the head of Acropolis Restoration Service.
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The recent agreement by the Metropolitan Museum in New York to return nineteen disputed artefacts to Egypt signifies yet another step in the turning tide against the retention of such pieces by museums.

From:
Periscope Post

Are art museums guilty of stealing?
12 November 2010

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced this week that it is sending 19 items, including a bracelet and a small bronze statue of a dog, excavated from the tomb of of the boy king Tutankhamun, back to Egypt. Art repatriation, it seems, is beginning to pick up steam.

This is not the first time that the Met have returned artifacts to their places of origin. As the Metropolis blog at the Wall Street Journal pointed out, last year the museum returned a granite fragment inscribed with the name of an Egyptian ruler to Cairo, and in 2001, the Met sent back a 19th-Dynasty relief, showing the head of an Egyptian goddess. Other items, such as Euphronios Krater (an ancient Greek vase), the Hellenistic silver collection (an ancient set of 16 silver pieces smuggled out of Sicily), as well as works of art that were looted by the Nazis, have been sent back home.
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Further coverage of France’s decision to return numerous disputed manuscripts to South Korea.

From:
UPI

World News
France will return Korean kings’ books
Published: Nov. 12, 2010 at 9:54 AM

SEOUL, Nov. 12 (UPI) — France will return a royal library its invaders stole from Korea in the 19th century, President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday.

The Uigwe books, royal records from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), were taken by a French force that seized a Korean island in 1866 in reprisal for persecution of French Catholic missionaries. The books are at the National Library of France.
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Further coverage of the Met’s decision to return various artefacts to Egypt. Although the artefacts are all relatively small, it is still an important decision & acknowledges the growing realisation by museums that holding onto disputed artefacts is becoming increasing untenable.

From:
CNN

Met returning 19 King Tut objects to Egypt
By the CNN Wire Staff
November 10, 2010 8:24 p.m. EST

New York (CNN) — The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is returning to Egypt 19 small objects that were entombed for centuries with ancient Egypt’s “boy king,” officials announced Wednesday.

A small bronze dog and a sphinx bracelet-element were attributed with certainty to Tutankhamun’s splendid burial chamber, which was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922 in the Valley of Kings, the museum and the Supreme Council of Antiques of Egypt said.
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In a surprising change of mind following an earlier court decision, France has decided to return various disputed manuscripts from the Bibliotheque Nationale to South Korea.

From:
People’s Daily

France to return stolen S. Korean royal document
21:14, November 12, 2010

France pledged Friday to return South Korean royal documents looted during its invasion more than a century ago, once a source of constant diplomatic feud between the two countries.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who held 40-minute summit talks with his South Korean counterpart Lee Myung-bak on the sidelines of the G20 economic summit here, promised to lease the ancient documents and allow the five-year lease deal to be renewed.
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Further coverage of the decision taken by the Metropolitan Museum in New York to return nineteen artefacts to Egypt. The items were all originally located in the tomb of Tutankhamen. Return of two of the artefacts & acknowledgment of Egypt’s ownership of them was first mooted prior to the World War Two.

From:
Wall Street Journal

Egypt Hunts Ancient Artifacts
New York’s Metropolitan Museum Says It Will Give Back 19 Items as Archaeologist Lobbies for Returns
By ASHRAF KHALIL

CAIRO—Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s larger-than-life antiquities chief, is hunting for treasures from some of the richest known troves—the world’s prominent museums.

In an increasingly public campaign, Dr. Hawass is lobbying international museums to return some of Egypt’s most important archaeological artifacts. These include the Rosetta Stone, displayed for more than 200 years in the British Museum, and the Zodiac of Dendera, housed in the Louvre in Paris.
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The Metropolitan Museum in New York has agreed to recognise Egypt’s title to nineteen artefacts from the tomb of Tutankhamen. These artefacts will now be returned to Egypt after the current Tutankhamen exhibition in Times Square ends in January.

From:
Bloomberg News

Met Museum to Return Tutankhamen’s Bronze Dog, Sphinx, Egypt Council Says
By Digby Lidstone – Nov 10, 2010 12:04 PM GMT

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has agreed to repatriate a collection of ancient Egyptian objects including a lapis-lazuli sphinx that once adorned a bracelet worn by King Tutankhamen, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities said.

Curators at the museum have established that all 19 antiquities, which also include a three-quarter-inch-high bronze dog, come from the tomb of the boy-pharaoh, which was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings, according to an e-mailed statement. They are among a number of objects that were acquired by the Met after the deaths of Carter and Lord Carnarvon, the English earl who sponsored the expedition.
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