Richard Leventhal
ICOM (International Council of Museums) on Feb. 3 issued a preliminary report on the antiquities situation in Egypt, including conflicting reports about Saqqara, which I have written about here and now also here, on the Huffington Post. (The link for ICOM’s report, posted by numerous sources, is now broken, however.)
On his website Sunday, Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities, praised the ICOM statement, except for its suggestion that members of the police were involved in the break-in and vandalism at the Egyptian Museum, which he said was untrue. He did not dispute ICOM’s account about Saqqara (which, unfortunately, I did not copy before it disappeared from the Internet).
Yesterday, Hawass provided further details about the damage to objects in the Egyptian Museum. A Wall Street Journal reporter, Christopher Rhoads, toured the museum with Hawass, and ended his report today by noting:
One reason given by those opposed to repatriation [of cultural objects] is that the country
isn’t equipped to properly care for the objects. The political crisis
likely hasn’t helped matters.Mr. Hawass disagrees. In the crisis, he said, “We have shown we can protect these things.”
Speaking of which, Richard Leventhal and Brian Daniels, director and fellow, respectively, of the
Penn Cultural Heritage Center at the University of Pennsylvania, have responded to this post about the situation Egypt, wherein I referred to Leventhal’s earlier comments to me that if objects of cultural heritage are to be repatriated, there should be assurances that those pieces will be safe and well cared for. (Leventhal is strongly pro-repatriation, in most instances.)
Here’s what Leventhal and Daniels wrote:
In light of the recent events in Egypt, there have been many calls [my links, not theirs] to rethink museum repatriation generally. This call is a conflation of two separate and independent issues. The first is about the legal and moral status of cultural property in Western museums. Longstanding international protocols and domestic laws around the world already structure the ownership of specific objects of heritage. Current events should not be the basis for changing or abrogating these laws. Nor should they derail current negotiations between cultural institutions and governments about legal ownership.
The second issue has to do with whether it is safe to return an object to a country while it is experiencing civil unrest or a natural disaster. In either case, this is a practical decision based upon an ongoing assessment of stability and safety at a particular moment. When a condition of stability and safety returns, cultural institutions must commit to the fidelity of their legal and moral obligations.
Nowhere in the world is it possible to predict when civil unrest or natural disaster will threaten our cultural institutions. The great fear of returning artifacts to Egypt is that they might be destroyed during some future unrest or transition in government. This is a knee-jerk, visceral response to real fears of damage to some of the world’s great cultural heritage, especially the Tutankhamun material at the Egyptian National Museum. Have we forgotten so quickly the reports that the crowds in Tahrir Square formed a human chain around the museum in the early days of the protests? That crowd reminds us that cultural heritage matters to Egyptians today. We owe it to them, once stability returns, to continue discussions about the return of cultural material.
Of course no objects should be returned to Egypt during this current period of civil unrest. However, in the near future, as Egypt regains stability, cultural institutions around the world have a duty to be good faith partners and continue to address cultural patrimony issues.