Imagine someone walking into your house, studio or simply, your room. That someone believes it is okay to take some of your belongings and keep them around 5000 km away from you.
Now let’s reflect.
The British Museum claims to preserve a collection of around 8 million objects maintaining human history, culture and art ageing almost 2 million years. What they don’t claim is the right to treasure ownership. If it has not come to your attention yet, the museum stores world treasures previously taken under different circumstances from their rightful creators, owners and lands.
The British Museum describes itself to be a “treasure trove” for objects that don’t even belong in Britain.
Here is a quick tour on how the British Museum is anything but British:
Alongside all the mentioned antique artefacts, there are much more displayed in the museum. A few of which you can find in this map below demonstrating the British Museum’s non-British treasures and where they belong:
[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=1iBZKYcFslOaCSykC6nyjmxga4l5NHfyj&hl=en&w=640&h=480]
Many countries including Egypt, Greece, Iraq and Nigeria have approached the museum for treasure ownership over their artefacts but the museum keeps rejecting the requests on the basis of believing the objects are safer in Britain.
Konstantinos Adamopoulos, a secretary at the Embassy of Greece in the UK, told The Voice of London that “the Parthenon Sculptures were forcingly removed by Lord Elgin.” Mr Adamopoulos continues to say that the Parthenon Sculptures are not freestanding pieces of art.
He also claims that “the Parthenon Sculptures should be reunified and exhibited in the New Acropolis Museum in Athens.” Mr Adamopoulos believes Great Britain can contribute to the restoration and the revival of the Parthenon by returning those Sculptures that are on display at the British Museum to their place of origin.
The Embassy of Egypt has also responded to VoL and are waiting for comments from appropriate authorities in Egypt.
The Voice of London has reached out to the British Museum for any comment but there has been no response.
Photo credit: Noura Abou Zeinab (unless otherwise stated)
Video credit: Noura Abou Zeinab
Audio credit: Adventures by A Himitsu https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgFw… Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…
Words by Noura Abou Zeinab | Subbing by Maria Campuzano