The Grand Egyptian Museum next to the pyramids of Giza has finally opened its lavish doors.
A significant development in the cultural life of Egypt
The first thing that its many visitors saw was the colossal 3,200-year-old statue of Pharaoh Ramses II, one of the first acquisitions of the new museum in 2018. The six-story grand staircase offers views of the pyramids, as well as monuments and artefacts from statues of pharaohs to sarcophagi and mummies. When the construction of the museum will finally be completed, it will house more than 100,000 exhibits, including treasures from Tutankhamun’s tomb.
However, no less interesting is the long list of Egyptian treasures that the museum will not be able to display. For example, those searching for even a mention of the Rosetta stone, a dark rock on which a decree issued by the Egyptian king Ptolemy V Epiphanes in 196 BC was carved in ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek, are doing so in vain. The same text in different languages gave scientists the first key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. However, to see this stone, you will have to visit the British Museum in London.
In the Cairo suburbs it is also impossible to find the granite statue of Ankhwa, a ship builder, from Saqqara, carved during the Third Dynasty of Egypt around 2650 BC – it is also in the British Museum. Perhaps some will want to see the famous statue of Amun in the form of a ram protecting King Taharqa (683 BC), but it is also in the British Museum. And if someone wants to gaze upon the three black granite statues of the goddess Sekhmet (1400 BC), the gilded outer sarcophagi from the tomb of Henuthemet in Thebes (1250 BC) or the black alabaster obelisk of King Nectanebo II (350 BC), then you will also need to go to London and visit the British Museum.
It may be recalled that the British Museum was founded in 1753 to store the collections of scientist and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane, but since then its contents have undergone significant changes, mainly due to 250 years of ruthless British colonial plundering. The museum’s Egyptian collection alone contains more than 50,000 artefacts, from tiny amulets to clothing and textiles, as well as monumental sculptures stolen from Egypt.
‘Naïve’ museum workers simply explain how all these treasures got to London at the time: “There were many ways in which objects got into the British Museum”, they say, or that they were “gifts”, they explain without batting an eye. It is known that many priceless exhibits were obtained from the Egypt Exploration Society, sponsored by the museum. Other exhibits were obtained from a 19th-century itinerant preacher, Reverend Greville John Chester, who “collected many antiquities during his almost annual travels, including several large exhibits”, the museum’s website says. However, all of these explanations were outdone by the former curator of the museum, who explained that “the collection belongs neither to the government nor the British Museum. It belongs to the public and is under the patronage of the trustees of the British Museum”. Sure, of course! When someone sneaks into my pocket in a supermarket queue and pulls out my wallet, he ‘trustingly keeps in under his patronage’ – an idiot’s explanation for idiots.
It is true that, until 1983, Egypt allowed the sale and export of antiquities, some of which left the country legally. But is it morally legitimate? It is an indisputable fact that at least 60% of the Egyptian collection of the British Museum was stolen, appropriated, illegally acquired, obtained by criminal means. If we draw an analogy between this and the Arabian tales of ‘One Thousand and One Nights’, then the museum stores more stolen goods than the cave of robbers visited by Aladdin.
Not all is from Egypt. The British Empire was a greedy robber with ample opportunities. The most famous acquisition of the museum is probably the collection of 5th century BC ancient Greek sculptures from the Parthenon and Acropolis, stolen from Athens by the 7th Earl of Elgin between 1801 and 1812, known as the ‘Elgin Marbles’. The museum justifies its decision to keep them by saying that they were obtained legally, with the permission of the Greek authorities “at that time”. What they omit is that Greece ‘at that time’ was under the control of the Ottoman Empire, which itself was an occupying power with little interest in preserving the legacy of its vassals.
The jewels adorning the crown of the British Empire are royal regalia. The Koh-i-Noor diamond is at its centre, weighing as much as 105.6 carats and being one of the largest faceted diamonds in the world. It is currently on public display in the Tower of London. Despite the fact that it shines so brightly, it has a dark past. The gemstone was first mentioned in connection with the Peacock Throne of the Mughals, which Nader Shah of Iran brought from Delhi in the 1740s. It eventually fell into the hands of eleven-year-old Duleep Singh, the maharaja of the Sikh Empire. The boy did everything he was told by the British East India Company, which annexed Punjab in 1849, so he ‘happily’ handed over the diamond as a ‘gift’ to Queen Victoria. Now India, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan have declared their right to the diamond and have demanded its return, but the weak king shows no signs of being ready to hand it over in the near future.
The British Museum has also faced increasing pressure over the years to return the treasures to the countries from which they were brazenly stolen, but the British government foresaw this as early as 1963. The British Museum Act, approved by the parliament in the same year, explicitly prohibits the removal of any items from museum collections, save for temporarily. In other words, the ‘cradle of democracy’ has legitimately sanctioned the misappropriation of stolen and fraudulently acquired treasures and historical rarities from many countries around the world to London. That is the essence of Western democracy itself; you can steal, kidnap and kill, all in the name of the lofty ideals of some kind of democracy.
Thus, to see all these priceless treasures and much more stolen by lords, peers and sirs, you must fly to London and go to Russell Square in the noble Bloomsbury district of the British capital, where the British Museum is located. It is there and not in Cairo, Delhi or Athens that local guides will eagerly talk about the priceless treasures on display at the British Museum. However, neither they nor anybody in London will tell the true story of the stolen historical rarities and how much blood was spilled because of them at the hands of their kidnappers. This is the essence of Western ‘democracy’ and its supporters, who have understood and taken to heart the Russian proverb: “what has fallen from the cart is gone” – and has made its way into the British Museum.
Viktor Mikhin, corresponding member of RANS, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
