British Museum Is World’s Largest Receiver Of Stolen Goods – Says QC

AncientPages.com – The British Museum has been accused of exhibiting “pilfered cultural property”, by a leading human rights lawyer who is calling for European and US institutions to return treasures taken from “subjugated peoples” by “conquerors or colonial masters”.

Geoffrey Robertson QC said: “The trustees of the British Museum have become the world’s largest receivers of stolen property, and the great majority of their loot is not even on public display.”

British Museum Is World's Largest Receiver Of Stolen Goods - Says QC

Part of the Parthenon or Elgin marbles at the British Museum in London. Photograph: Dylan Martinez/Reuters

He criticised the museum for allowing an unofficial “stolen goods tour”, “which stops at the Elgin marbles, Hoa Hakananai’a, the Benin bronzes and other pilfered cultural property”. The three items he mentioned are wanted by Greece, Easter Island and Nigeria respectively.

“That these rebel itineraries are allowed is a tribute to the tolerance of this great institution, which would be even greater if it washed its hands of the blood and returned Elgin’s loot,” Robertson said.

He accused the museum of telling “a string of carefully-constructed lies and half- truths” about how the marbles “were ‘saved’ or ‘salvaged’ or ‘rescued’ by Lord Elgin, who came into possession of them lawfully.”

He criticised “encyclopaedic museums” such as the British Museum, the Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan in New York that “lock up the precious legacy of other lands, stolen from their people by wars of aggression, theft and duplicity”.

Robertson’s views appear in his book, Who Owns History? Elgin’s Loot and the Case for Returning Plundered Treasure.

He writes: “This is a time for humility – something the British, still yearning for the era when they ruled the world, ie for Brexit, do not do very well. Before it releases any of its share of other people’s cultural heritage, the British Museum could mount an exhibition – ‘The Spoils of Empire’.” Others argue that the empire also brought benefits, including education and legislation.

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