Neolithic tomb, archeological looting and Egyptian pieces

Hi there, my dearest readers! Welcome to our blog British and Irish art. Our names are Rocio Serrano Arnesto and Mari Cruz Mesa Ruiz and we are Translation and Interpreting students. Some Fridays we will be sharing our thoughts and opinions about topics related to literature, music, cinema, art, museums, and so on. We will also be doing reviews of actual, current news which involve these topics too. 

In today's post, you will find information about old tombs moved recently, archeological looting, and Egyptian pieces.

The first article that we are going to comment on was written last 25th September by Rebecca Black and we read it at Irish Independent, an Irish online newspaper. It is about an ancient tomb, older than the Egyptian pyramids, which was discovered in Ballintaggart. 

The tomb, dating to the Neolithic era, was excavated from its original location in 1996 and it was moved to the Ulster Museum until 2006 when it was transferred again to Ulster Folk Museum because of some renovations that had to take place. But this year is coming back to its first home, the Ulster Museum.

What has caught our attention is the fact that this tomb is originally from Ireland and it is still there nowadays. However, this is not what happens when the historical remains are from another country such as India, Greece or Egypt.

Thinking about it, we have remembered some news that we had read on the BBC last December about a sarcophagus that the University College Cork, an Irish university, is going to return to Egypt this year 2023. Inside this sarcophagus there were human remains and typical Egyptian mummification items like canopic jars and cartonnage.

Currently, only a 10% of looted art has come back to its original country and we consider that is extremely unfair because art is one of the most nourishing cultural aspects for a growing society. 

In addition to this, the British empire had stolen not only works of art but archeological pieces, which lacked any ethical values. They had stolen the souvenirs of a nation, of a society and of a whole historical period. Art should be where it belongs so anybody who has grown up at the same place that the artist did can enjoy it and learn from it.

If you visit the British Museum, you will find a large variety of works of art that respond to many differents ethnics groups: The Parthenon Sculptures (Greece), Rosetta Stone (Egypt), Hoa Hakananai’a (Chile), Benin Bronzes (Nigeria), Maqdala Treasures (Ethiopia)...

We asked ourselves why the governments haven't taken part in this problem, but then we searched for information and found out that there has even been a conflict between the United Kingdom and Iran for the Cyrus Cylinder, which texts has been considered the first human rights declarations. Iran government has demanded to take it back but they have just achieved a short term loan. But Iran is not the only nation that has tried to recover its remains: Nigeria and Ethiopia have been fighting for years attempting to rescue their looted art. 

As we have said before, looting is harrowing for the cultural society and for the nation's history. Imagine you are a tourist in Greece. It would be awful, painful indeed, being walking around the Pantheon and realising that you can't enjoy it completely because somebody pulled up a part of it. Now imagine that you are not a tourist but a native Greek and you have to deal with that feeling everyday, with the feeling of have lost a really important details of your past. 

We have looked for real natives and experts testimonies and almost all of them share the same opinion: the archeological remains should come back where they used to be when they were created.

We also got the point of the British government because having all that exotic stuff is wholesome for their economy and their fame. The British army was objectively brilliant and it is well known that they conquered lots of different places, but they can't own all they want.

As far as we are concerned, money is not all that is worth. What about values? We definitely should not forget that we are just people after all. We are all the same and we deserve to have the same opportunities.  

We are going to add right down some photographies of the Neolithic tomb and of the Egyptian sarcophagus with its mummified remains.

We are now saying goodbye until next Friday! Thank you all for reading our content, we truly hope you enjoy it and mainly that you learn from it. We just want to make you think and expand your knowledge. If you would like to learn more about looted art, let us know in the comments section below.

See you soon, my dearest reader!

Photographies:

The Neolithic tomb.

The Egyptian sarcophagus.

Bibliography:

Black, R. (2023, 25th September). Tomb Older than the Pyramids secures new home at Ulster Folk Museum. Independent.ie. https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/tomb-older-than-the-pyramids-secures-new-home-at-ulster-folk-museum/a1491054515.html

Armstrong, B. K. (2022, 8th December). Ireland to return mummified remains and sarcophagus to Egypt. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63908027

Wikipedia contributors. (2023). Art theft. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_theft#:~:text=Only%20a%20small%20percentage%20of,valued%20at%20over%20%24500%20million.

B, D. (2019, 14 septiembre). Estos son los mayores tesoros expoliados que exhiben los museos (y reclaman los países de origen). El Español. https://www.elespanol.com/cultura/patrimonio/20190915/mayores-tesoros-expoliados-exhiben-museos-reclaman-paises/428987102_3.html#img_7