Submitted by Sean Williams on Wed, 12/09/2009 - 17:29
Does Zahi Hawass want the Rosetta Stone on loan or not? It's hard to know if you read the news often enough. Last night saw Egypt's antiquities boss come to the British Museum in London to promote his new book A Secret Voyage. Yet among the niceties between Dr Hawass and BM director Neil MacGregor, trouble was already brewing behind the scenes.
A frieze ran all along the four side of temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis. It was 25.94 metres long and formed by 14 marble blocks. The frieze depicts on the eastern side an assembly of Olympian Gods and on the other three sides idealised scenes from historic battles, such as the Battle of Plataea (the victory of the Greeks over the Persians in 479 BC).
A whole block and parts of others were lost, so the reconstruction of some parts of the frieze is uncertain.
Four blocks, two from the southern side and two from the western, are in the British Museum of London.
Submitted by Jon Himoff on Tue, 11/24/2009 - 14:01
The big Museums have the greatest advantage when it comes to the artefacts that the UNESCO heritage sites and others want back -- the big Museums have possession. Further, the Museums typically reside in the countries that made the laws governing repatriation. But as cultural tourism continues to be a growing and massive business, the UNESCO sites are making their own big Museums and are able to hire their own lawyers to defend their interests (check Zahi Hawass' Most Wanted List). The complex battle for who controls artefacts is really heating-up now. Perhaps the issue of who owns antiquity is possibly less urgent than who controls it.
Submitted by Sean Williams on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 08:51
The air around the Elgin Marbles has turned blue many a time - but few would've pictured any of the magnificent sculptures the same colour. Yet this is exactly what a physicist at the British Museum claims to have discovered today. Giovanni Verri claims that by using red light he has found traces of an ancient hue, known as Egyptian Blue, painted on many of the priceless pieces. In fact, Verri says that 17 of the 56 marbles have revealed traces of the pigment, which was first used in Egypt and Mesopotamia as early as 2,500 BC.
