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In my First Person column in the September/October issue, I discussed the recent demands by Mediterranean countries for the return of antiquities from Western museums. I argued that sometimes a particular culture might have a claim superior to that of the country where an object was found. As a hypothetical, I put the case of Egypt’s demanding from Israel the return of the first Tablets of the Law that Moses shattered when he came down from Mt. Sinai and found the Israelites worshiping the golden calf. Would Egypt have a claim superior to Israel’s because the tablets were found in the Sinai, now—and then, too—part of Egypt?
Since this column was published, two other “hard” cases are being discussed, one involving Turkey and the other Iraq.
Turkey is engaged in “an unprecedentedly bold campaign to bring back treasures that it believes were stolen, which now sit in Western museums,” according to an article in The Economist.1 Turkish authorities “are refusing to lend treasures abroad, dragging their feet on licensing foreign archaeological digs and launching public campaigns they hope will shame Western museums.”
Yet the star of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum is what some believe is the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great. Ironically, it was found in Sidon in what is now Lebanon. It was taken to Istanbul when the Ottoman empire ruled the area. How would Turkish authorities feel if Lebanon should demand its return?
The second matter involves Iraq. After Saddam Hussein was toppled from power in 2003, documents and records of Baghdad’s Jewish community were discovered in the flooded basement of the headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Saddam’s secret police. The first stage of the conservation process was largely funded by an American Jewish philanthropist, Harvey Krueger, then an investment banker with Lehman Brothers. Among the rescued documents were parts of a Bible published in Venice in 1568. Other items included a Torah scroll and its wooden cover. Apparently entire synagogue libraries had been confiscated by Saddam Hussein’s regime; thousands of books were recovered from the Mukhabarat basement, as well as more mundane records kept by the Jewish community—a calendar with lists of prayers for each holy day, marriage records, school records, applications for university admission. Ultimately, the collection was placed in 27 aluminum trunks and shipped to the United States for conservation.
A Jewish organization that came to Baghdad after Hussein’s fall found only 34 Jews there, mostly old and sick. After Israel declared its independence in 1948, Iraq declared being a Zionist a crime, punishable by seven years in prison. After one show trial in Baghdad, nine Jews were hanged in a public square. During the first three years of Israel’s existence 125,000 Iraqi Jews emigrated to Israel.
The Jewish treasures from the Mukhabarat headquarters are still in the United States, awaiting a final decision on where they should go.
Iraq has now demanded the return of these documents. According to Iraq’s Tourism and Archaeology Minister Liwaa Smaisim, Iraq will use “all the means” to get the Jewish collection back. Getting this collection back is part of an Iraqi effort to “rescue Iraq’s cultural history lost during the invasion,” according to Saad Eskander, director of Iraq’s National Library and Archives. As reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “Iraq said it would end archaeological cooperation with the United States until the archives are returned.”
Where should the collection go?—H.S.
In my First Person column in the September/October issue, I discussed the recent demands by Mediterranean countries for the return of antiquities from Western museums. I argued that sometimes a particular culture might have a claim superior to that of the country where an object was found.a As a hypothetical, I put the case of Egypt’s demanding from Israel the return of the first Tablets of the Law that Moses shattered when he came down from Mt. Sinai and found the Israelites worshiping the golden calf. Would Egypt have a claim superior to Israel’s because the tablets were found […]
