Original artefacts

The possession of originals like artefacts and paintings is an obsession with many people and the source of a lot of friction between nations. Can’t see the point of much of this generally. Let’s look at a few:

Egypt understandably would like the Rosetta Stone out of the British Museum. Let them have it, I say, for we could make a perfectly acceptable copy. Enormous quantities of Egyptian artefacts were taken abroad over the years and they don’t moan too much about most of them. Maybe that’s because they have plenty left. Nonetheless, I’d return the bust of Nefertiti from Berlin.

I am far less sympathetic to Greece’s request for the return of the Elgin Marbles but that is born of the fact that they have just bloody well moaned for years and are a pain in the arse. Melina Mercouri made it an obsession and that only increased my resolve to tell her to piss off. As an actress turned to politics, I suspect she made this a cause to further her political profile. The Greeks have a wondrous history but I see little that they have done to promote it. I mean it took the Brits to kick off the project to create an ancient trireme.

Iran wants to borrow the cylinder of Cyrus the Great, arguably the world’s first declaration of human rights. Well, first they do some pretty fine full size replicas for sale in Iran so why do they want the original, even if as they say, they only wish to borrow it? Usual reason, we want the original, it’s ours, it’s part of our history and so on. The British Museum is behaving as though it does not trust Iran to return it; can’t say I blame them. Well we could swap the original with one of those tourist replicas and surely that would be good enough for the researchers who say they wish to study it more. Let Iran have it and if they destroy it with a car bomb, what the heck?

Now to the arts like painting and sculpture. Well they are easily reproducible and have been, so what’s the fuss? This is where I compare the museums with the airports on which I wrote earlier – testosterone. All a bit like kids really – ‘I’ve got the original Guernica, so go suck,’ ‘I’ve got the Mona Lisa, so bugger you.’ I have but 3 original paintings in this house plus a silk embroidery: they are lovely. If they were copies, it would not bother me a bit.

And then there is the value of the originals. Those in the public domain are generally worth nothing because the very museums and galleries that hold them are unlikely to sell them. Maybe we should rethink this – like ‘Hi Egypt, we’ve racked up a lot of debt, how much for the Rosetta Stone, in gold, of course?’ Trouble here is that the sellers are often richer than the prospective buyers and that’s certainly true of Greece right now with an economy that is truly buggered.

Private ownership is another issue entirely. Private ownership is a matter for the individual and you could argue that it is based on the sin of coveting not that that is particularly relevant. The beauty of private ownership is that if you keep it secret, no other bugger knows and therefore won’t make a claim.

I have some rare stamps. I have no unique ones but I have 2 examples of which there are only 3 others in the world and no photocopy would satisfy me. No one out there is clamouring for mine.

Finally you get the mixed private/public ownership such as the Koh-I-Noor diamond in the Crown Jewels – privately owned but we all know about it. Bhutto (Ali not Benazir) of Pakistan once asked for it back which is a bloody cheek since it was found in SW India. I guess you might make a replica of it in cubic zirconia but it wouldn’t be the same.

So where has this ramble led me? Nowhere really. Guess I’d hand back the really crucial artefacts (except to Greece) that could be copied and keep the rest.