I’ve read recently of the ongoing efforts to return cultural artefacts to their countries of origin and works of art to their owners. Visiting the British Museum in my youth, I was struck by the huge collection and often, huge pieces of gateways, sculptures and pillars on display. Then, it never occurred to me that just about all of it was effectively stolen in the name of the British Empire just as every other museum of its kind based its collection on a variety of Indian Jones clones looting the ancient world.  You’d think now however, the age of empires being over, [let’s not get into superpowers] that such artefact appropriation was over. However, the recent fuss over relics from India probably proves that it will never be over.

The first such appropriation that I recall was the request from the Greek government for the return of the Elgin Marbles. Museums in Sweden, Germany, America and the Vatican acknowledged that items taken from the Acropolis should be returned but The British Museum wasn’t about to put an end to more than two centuries of bad feeling in Greece and even legislated to ensure that even if they wanted to, The British Museum Act (1963) states clearly that the institution cannot legally return items from its collection: All very convenient. As a corollary, the BM considered that Greece should not have anything back because it was incapable of looking after any of it – this after restorers at the BM used sandpaper, chisels and acid on the marbles causing irreparable damage. It is still doubtful whether Lord Elgin was ever actually granted permission to take the marbles in the first place but the patronising, nanny state attitude of the BM left a lot to be desired.

When the Iraqi prime minister’s plane touched down in Baghdad after an official visit to the United States in recent times, its cargo included 17,000 archaeological artifacts returned by a major museum and an Ivy League university. Clay tablets and seals from Mesopotamia were reclaimed by the Iraqi Culture Ministry. The Ivy Leaguer in question needed the artefacts to prove that the bible is actual history – and they may be right in general terms- but such appropriation in the end probably contravened the moral imperatives underpinning the institutions. Of course, many items simply vanished in the ongoing attempts to introduce democracy to this ancient part of the world where empires have risen and fallen many times but the finders-keepers argument simply doesn’t hold water. Besides, one argument for returning nothing is that many of the world’s greatest museums would be emptied of their trademark exhibits and we can’t have that.

The great museums were ostensibly late inventions. The BM was established in 1759 and many others came into being in the 19^th century. As symbols of power and reach, they were the proletarian equivalent of the great palaces of the past. Whether they came into being to house the accumulated artefacts appropriated by military expeditionaries or were purpose- built to enhance cultural awareness, their role has long since changed. The desire to explore and celebrate human achievement knows no bounds and having catalogued artefacts available for study certainly advances the idea of study but the materials appropriated came from established ancient cultures unique to specific countries. Where these artefacts ended up though was in countries that had no such history. Britain is essentially a mongrel – a composite population drawn in from all over the world and while there are recognisable artefacts such as royal jewelry or Big Ben, British culture comes down to what it stole as Britain established an empire. The USA is no different. While it makes a fuss about its native American past in a mea culpa apology for what amounted to genocide, there is no such thing as American culture that compares or will ever compare to the Mesopotamian and Greek civilisations. After all, the US will go down in cultural history for the exploits of Hollywood producers and the inventor of the hamburger. Ivy League universities basing their credentials on what money could buy in the way of artefacts is very different from creating your own and hanging onto them. The simple truth is that you can’t buy a culture even if you can buy endless artefacts, stolen or otherwise. The museums are examples of the fallacy of believing that it is possible.

Interestingly the same concerns don’t surround national art collections. The odd piece of Nazi-looted art turns up but the main concern with such institutions is the much-vaunted threat of the number of possible fakes. There is no suggestion of returning anything to a country of origin although great efforts have been made to set up museums to van Gogh, Rembrandt and Twombly among others in their countries of origin for purely tourist reasons although that doesn’t mean that examples of the works of such artists can’t be found all over the world. Twombly, of course, chose to spend his life outside of the USA and was never counted by critics pushing an American Art so he doesn’t count.

The argument put up by the BM for having its collection in London was so that people and scholars could make cross-culture comparisons in the one place without having to country hop. As admirable as this sounds in 19^th century terms when only the well-heeled actually had the opportunity to travel, and there was a heart-felt need to educate the proletariat on matters empirical, ease of travel [assuming that covid-shut borders open again sometime soon], means that the argument for returning artefacts to where they belong is strong. The Babylonian Istar Gate certainly doesn’t belong in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin but then again it is probably safer there than at the centre of two military actions in Iraq to safeguard oil supplies for the west or even the ever-present threat of demolition by ISIS extremists determined to rewrite history. The ancient statues that Islamic State militants smashed on camera in Mosul were proved to be copies of precious artifacts of Iraqi heritage and in an act of propitious foresight the real ones are said to be in Baghdad in a vault. But then again, trying to keep the past alive for future generations, carries about as much popular weight, outside of scholarly circles, as preserving wilderness or the Amazon rain forest.

If the theorists are right about an advanced civilisation preceding everything that we think we know about history, the need for human self-acclamation may yet prove to be an act of futility in the face of climate change or passing planets whipping up another great flood. Then there is the threat of the return of the alien civilisation that genetically engineered Neanderthals to create Homo Sapiens as a slave race, discovering the mistake it made in the leaving them to their own devices and rectifying it.