When Ancient Artifacts Become Political Pawns
BERLIN — As thousands lined up to catch a glimpse of Nefertiti at the newly reopened Neues Museum here, another skirmish erupted in the culture wars. Egypt’s chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, announced that his country wanted its queen handed back forthwith, unless Germany could prove that the 3,500-year-old bust of Akhenaten’s wife wasn’t spirited illegally out of Egypt nearly a century ago.
“We’re not treasure hunters,” Mr. Hawass told Spiegel Online. “If it’s proven clearly that the work was not stolen,” he said. “there shouldn’t be any problem.”
Then he said he was sure the work had been stolen.
Globalization, it turns out, has only intensified, not diminished, cultural differences among nations. The forces of nationalism love to exploit culture because it’s symbolic, economically potent and couches identity politics in a legal context that tends to pit David against Goliath.
Mr. Hawass also recently fired a shot at France, demanding the Louvre return five fresco fragments it purchased in 2000 and 2003 from a gallery and at auction. They belonged to a 3,200-year-old tomb near Luxor and had been in storage at the museum. Egypt had made the demand before, but this time suspended the Louvre’s long-term excavation at Saqqara, near Cairo, and said it would stop collaborating on Louvre exhibitions.
France got the message. It promised to send the fragments back tout de suite.
It didn’t go unnoticed in Paris, Berlin or Cairo that Mr. Hawass pressed his case about Nefertiti and suspended the excavations by the Louvre just after his country’s culture minister, Farouk Hosny, bitterly lost a bid to become director general of the United Nations’ cultural agency, Unesco. The post went late last month to a Bulgarian diplomat instead. Mr. Hosny would have been the first Arab to land the job, and Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, had banked a not insignificant amount of his own prestige on the minister’s getting it.
But Jewish groups and prominent French and German intellectuals (not the Israeli government, though) campaigned against Mr. Hosny. When asked in Egypt’s Parliament last year about the presence of Israeli books in Alexandria’s library, Mr. Hosny said: “Let’s burn these books. If there are any, I will burn them myself before you.” That prompted Elie Wiesel, Claude Lanzmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy in Le Monde to urge that he not be selected, also quoting Mr. Hosny as saying in 2001, “Israeli culture is an inhuman culture” based on theft...
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“We’re not treasure hunters,” Mr. Hawass told Spiegel Online. “If it’s proven clearly that the work was not stolen,” he said. “there shouldn’t be any problem.”
Then he said he was sure the work had been stolen.
Globalization, it turns out, has only intensified, not diminished, cultural differences among nations. The forces of nationalism love to exploit culture because it’s symbolic, economically potent and couches identity politics in a legal context that tends to pit David against Goliath.
Mr. Hawass also recently fired a shot at France, demanding the Louvre return five fresco fragments it purchased in 2000 and 2003 from a gallery and at auction. They belonged to a 3,200-year-old tomb near Luxor and had been in storage at the museum. Egypt had made the demand before, but this time suspended the Louvre’s long-term excavation at Saqqara, near Cairo, and said it would stop collaborating on Louvre exhibitions.
France got the message. It promised to send the fragments back tout de suite.
It didn’t go unnoticed in Paris, Berlin or Cairo that Mr. Hawass pressed his case about Nefertiti and suspended the excavations by the Louvre just after his country’s culture minister, Farouk Hosny, bitterly lost a bid to become director general of the United Nations’ cultural agency, Unesco. The post went late last month to a Bulgarian diplomat instead. Mr. Hosny would have been the first Arab to land the job, and Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, had banked a not insignificant amount of his own prestige on the minister’s getting it.
But Jewish groups and prominent French and German intellectuals (not the Israeli government, though) campaigned against Mr. Hosny. When asked in Egypt’s Parliament last year about the presence of Israeli books in Alexandria’s library, Mr. Hosny said: “Let’s burn these books. If there are any, I will burn them myself before you.” That prompted Elie Wiesel, Claude Lanzmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy in Le Monde to urge that he not be selected, also quoting Mr. Hosny as saying in 2001, “Israeli culture is an inhuman culture” based on theft...