|
|
|
|
|
|
by rayiner
2346 days ago
|
|
|
> While reserving respect for Holmes’s reforming efforts, Mazza did not pull her punches. The Greens have “poured millions on the legal and illegal antiquities market without having a clue about the history, the material features, cultural value, fragilities and problems of the objects,” she said. This irresponsible collecting “is a crime against culture and knowledge of immense proportions – as the facts unfolding under our eyes do prove.” That’s an interesting charge. The article repeatedly points out that the Bible Museum didn’t know anything was stolen, and cooperated to return things when they found out. But its the Oxford classics department that is keeping these artifacts hidden, inaccessible to the public or even other researchers for the last century. It was an Oxford professor that tried to sell them illegally, but that was made possible by the secrecy of and opaqueness of Oxford’s stewardship of the collection. Who exactly is the villain? |
|
|
What the article repeatedly points out are circumstantial reasons for thinking the Bible Museum very much knew that they were not engaged in legitimate trade. 99.6% of the papyri the museum owns lack provenance and are still inaccessible to researchers and the public, even digitally. Artifacts were declared as "tile samples" when shipped to the US. The museum only returned pieces after years of controversy whose resolution came about without their cooperation (proof that the papyri were stolen was assembled without cooperation from the Greens).