I wonder how much better many ancient sites would be if they hadn’t been vandalised by the archeologists who stumbled upon them?
Three Egyptian obelisks, misnamed Cleopatra’s Needles, now stand erect in London, Paris and New York.
Large chunks the Parthenon in Athens were stolen by the 7th Earl of Elgin, then shipped to England. They are now the pride of the British Museum.
Heinrich Schlieman, a German archeologist and fortune hunter, smuggled Priam’s Treasure, said to come from ancient Troy, to Berlin.
In 1945 it was stolen again, this time by the Red Army and taken to Moscow. It’s now in the Pushkin Museum.
Did they remove these treasures for the sake of art history or to enhance their own wealth and reputations?
