Five Frescoes Flying Home
Back in 2000 the Louvre was offered a couple of wall paintings from an unknown Egyptian tomb. The pieces of plaster where relatively small and the owner of the pieces appeared to have proper title to them, so the Louvre gladly purchased them and put them on display. Three years later another couple of pieces were offered - it is not clear whether the same dealer was involved - making a total of five in all, and again the Louvre purchased them and put them on display. Hieroglyphs in the frescoes identified the tomb owner as a certain Tetaki, about whom nothing was known.
In November of last year (2008) archaeologists working on the west bank of the Nile near Luxor were surprised to discover the tomb of Tetaki, a minor nobleman who was buried among his contemporaries in the area known as the Tombs of the Nobles. Gaping holes on the walls showed where the pieces now in the Louvre had been hacked out and questioning the locals pointed to sometime in the 1980s as the time when the frescoes were removed.
That put a whole different aspect on the story. Had it been the 1880s, when wide-scale looting of Egypt's treasures went on and no one thought anything of it, the museum's title would be as good as anyone else's, but by the 1980s there were laws to protect antiquities and the removal of the frescoes was an illegal act. Zahi Hawass promptly put in a claim for the return of the five pieces of plaster.
There is no doubt that he was within his rights to demand their return, but the French were in no hurry to comply and his letters on the subject disappeared into the labyrinthine maze of French bureaucracy without leaving even a ripple. In early October, therefore, Zahi Hawass announced the suspension of ties with the Louvre Museum and closed down the French excavations at Saqqara. He even cancelled a lecture tour in Egypt by a former curator of Egyptian antiquities at the Louvre.
In an amazing demonstration of how the French can actually short-circuit their bureaucracy when they really want to, within two days a committee of 35 specialists had investigated the matter and unanimously recommended that the pieces of fresco should be returned and Frederic Mitterrand, the French Culture Minister (who has enough problems on his plate over claims that he is a homosexual paedophile who exploited children in Thailand) promptly announced that he accepted the committee's recommendations and would be returning the disputed frescoes - though he notably did not say when this would happen.
For once it would appear that Zahi Hawass has right on his side in his war against tourism and the west generally. Matters are less clear in his other notable claims to the famous bust of Hatshepsut and the Rosetta Stone. If, as now appears, the bust of Hatshepsut was illegally removed from Egypt, then I concede that he probably has a case in law. Ethically, however, I feel that the bust should remain where it is in Berlin.
Like all such great treasures, the bust of Hatsheptsut belongs to the world, not to any one country. The bust is safe in Berlin, where visitors are allowed to photograph it and where it is safe from the ravages of Muslim fundamentalism. Were it to be returned to Egypt it would disappear into some dark corner of a museum where photography is prohibited, security is lax and idiots with bombs and Wahabi Islam on the brain roam. By all means let the Berlin museum provide Egypt with an exact replica, but I feel that until both Muslim fanatics and Zahi Hawas himself stop attacking Westerners the original should stay in Berlin.
There are no such doubts about the Rosetta Stone. It was obtained legally at a time when the Egyptians were using such ancient remains for erecting modern buildings. The French removed it from a fort they were repairing and intended to take it back to France. They were defeated by the British and the stone ended up in London instead, but had it remained in Egypt it would simply have gone back into the fort and by now the priceless inscription in three languages (or scripts) would have been worn away by military feet. We would never have deciphered hieroglyphics.
Frankly, I don't see what all the fuss is about. The original Rosetta stone stood for many years in a metal cradle in the British Museum. Later, in an ill-thought out move, the Museum authorities built it into a wall, claiming that it was thus displayed in something more nearly approaching its original setting. This proved so unpopular - and frankly, it meant that the famous stone was reduced to a black panel in the wall - that the stone has been taken out of the wall and is now on display in a glass case.
However if you turn right instead of left in the great central court of the Museum, you will find yourself in a recreated "gentleman's cabinet" where a variety of treasures are on display as they might have been in the home of an 18th century dilettante collector. Behind a door, neatly positioned to catch the unwary visitor on the shins, is the metal cradle and the Rosetta Stone!
The attendant in the room assures me that this one is a reproduction, but after peering at it on several visits I am not convinced. Without taking a hammer to it, I can't tell whether it is made of basalt or plaster of Paris! Indeed, even if it was made of basalt, it could still be a reproduction, considering how good modern laser techniques are now.
I firmly believe that the museums of the world should open up their treasures to be freely reproduced. Britain could give a free copy of the Rosetta Stone to Egypt and pay for it by charging everyone else a little bit extra, we could do the same with the Elgin Marbles for the Greeks, and Egypt could sell copies of Tutankhamun's death mask to all and sundry - gold or plastic according to taste and budget.
There will always be a certain cachet about the "real", "original" item and it is fair that students should have to travel to far off lands to examine the original, but whether it is jade warriors from Mexico, terracotta ones from China, golden coffins from Egypt, marble statues from Greece or Rome, or crudely carved bits of wood from New Guinea, all great art belongs to the world and should be freely shared without the constant disputes over copyrights and ownerships that at present do so much to make art expensive and theft profitable.
© Kendall K. Down 2009
