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Imagine if Egyptian law enforcement had the wherewithal to go after every nation and organization that's plundered their funereal monuments. It could end up as

Imagine if Egyptian law enforcement had the wherewithal to go after every nation and organization that's plundered their funereal monuments. It could end up as a Kohi-Noor-level tug-of-war. Except unlike the stone matrikas, many Egyptian artifacts were friable, like mummies and their wrappings. In other news, the Holy See has donated fragments of the True Cross to England for use in the coronation of King Charles III. Imagine how many True Crosses you could assemble if you gathered all their fragments together.

BoxOfRain 4y ago
Wasn't a fragment of the True Cross rumoured to have gone down with the Moskva last year?
viciousvoxel 4y ago
This reminds me of the saying, "you could build a cathedral with all the pieces of the 'True' Cross," which I believe originated in Medieval Christendom. Even back then it was widely known that many, if not most, religious relics were probably fake.
- dalbasal 4y ago
  ..if not all. And they certainly knew it then too. Maybe they didn't really care, and had a similar view to us about the matter. I don't think anyone believes the Vatican is sending actual true cross relics for the coronation. Still, the fact that the artefact has been a fake relic for 1000 years, has a history, is being sent by the pope... those are enough for it to function as a symbol. I think it's always ironically hard, with history, to know if the mindset was different or similar to ours. Ancient economies sometimes seem to work in ways that ours wouldn't for mindset reasons. Other times things are more similar to our times than we suppose. I think we're bad at recognising which parts of our own culture are unique and novel, and which are relatively trivial, common, or even inherent.
  - dmreedy 4y ago
    Indeed. As the line goes: the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there. Equally human, equally logical, but with different priors, different axioms, different base truths to reason from. > Maybe they didn't really care, and had a similar view to us about the matter. My impression is that this is probably not the case however. Another line following from the above is that ancient people believed their religions, with the same unexamined priors as we believe in our own modern Truths. But since they were human, too, there is always room for charlatanism, fraud, and delusions of grandeur. And humor as a defensive mechanism against all of that.
- 1123581321 4y ago
  While I’m skeptical of the origins of holy relics, that’s just a saying. Most fragments are small slivers and it’s been estimated that they add up to a small fraction of the weight of a complete cross.
loloquwowndueo 4y ago
Almost as many as you could assemble saints by gathering the corresponding body parts now kept as relics around the world. “So this guy was truly a miracle, he had 7 arms and 2 heads”
VoodooJuJu 4y ago
>Imagine if Egyptian law enforcement had the wherewithal to go after every nation and organization that's plundered their funereal monuments That would be pretty unjust considering that the funeral monuments don't belong to modern Egypt, as they were constructed by a radically different people some thousands of years ago. And at the time they were taken by British colonists, Egypt as a nation wasn't a thing either. So we have three separate entities: Ancient Egypt, whatever Egypt was when the British took some ancient artifacts, and then the modern nation of Egypt. Maybe the most just thing to do would be to find the descendants of those who were buried with the artifacts and return them their family heirlooms? Or no, perhaps those descended from the artisans and slaves who created the artifacts? But what of the invaders of Egypt seeking to destroy the artifacts? Should we give them the artifacts? Destruction is perhaps undesirable, so maybe we can place them somewhere in the world with the best steward? Does this mean my family can be repatriated our ancestral lands in northern Cumbria? If we get to play that game, you may not like how it works out for you. Or maybe we can stop looking at history with a modern, nationlistic lens. Stop looking at it with our modern sense of values. Stop trying to apply our modern sense of justice and misbeliefs about what did and didn't happen hundreds, thousands of years ago.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  We're not trying to adapt history to our modern values. We're trying to answer a modern question. What to do with ancient artifacts. Continuity with the ancient past is muddled or impossible, but there is still a place they come from, and the possibility they belong there. Continuity is muddled or impossible, but it's true that some people and places have stronger claims to that continuity than others. It's also true that these were taken during a period of european plundering of resources of all kinds, and that we're heirs and beneficiaries to that plundering in other ways, as well as this one. It's a complicated question, involving history certainly. But in no was is this us trying to graft modern morals onto the past. But it is a moral question regarding the past, and modern morals are the only ones we have to guide our decisions.

BoxOfRain 4y ago

Wasn't a fragment of the True Cross rumoured to have gone down with the Moskva last year?

viciousvoxel 4y ago

This reminds me of the saying, "you could build a cathedral with all the pieces of the 'True' Cross," which I believe originated in Medieval Christendom. Even back then it was widely known that many, if not most, religious relics were probably fake.

dalbasal 4y ago
..if not all. And they certainly knew it then too. Maybe they didn't really care, and had a similar view to us about the matter. I don't think anyone believes the Vatican is sending actual true cross relics for the coronation. Still, the fact that the artefact has been a fake relic for 1000 years, has a history, is being sent by the pope... those are enough for it to function as a symbol. I think it's always ironically hard, with history, to know if the mindset was different or similar to ours. Ancient economies sometimes seem to work in ways that ours wouldn't for mindset reasons. Other times things are more similar to our times than we suppose. I think we're bad at recognising which parts of our own culture are unique and novel, and which are relatively trivial, common, or even inherent.
- dmreedy 4y ago
  Indeed. As the line goes: the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there. Equally human, equally logical, but with different priors, different axioms, different base truths to reason from. > Maybe they didn't really care, and had a similar view to us about the matter. My impression is that this is probably not the case however. Another line following from the above is that ancient people believed their religions, with the same unexamined priors as we believe in our own modern Truths. But since they were human, too, there is always room for charlatanism, fraud, and delusions of grandeur. And humor as a defensive mechanism against all of that.
1123581321 4y ago
While I’m skeptical of the origins of holy relics, that’s just a saying. Most fragments are small slivers and it’s been estimated that they add up to a small fraction of the weight of a complete cross.

loloquwowndueo 4y ago

Almost as many as you could assemble saints by gathering the corresponding body parts now kept as relics around the world. “So this guy was truly a miracle, he had 7 arms and 2 heads”

VoodooJuJu 4y ago

>Imagine if Egyptian law enforcement had the wherewithal to go after every nation and organization that's plundered their funereal monuments That would be pretty unjust considering that the funeral monuments don't belong to modern Egypt, as they were constructed by a radically different people some thousands of years ago. And at the time they were taken by British colonists, Egypt as a nation wasn't a thing either. So we have three separate entities: Ancient Egypt, whatever Egypt was when the British took some ancient artifacts, and then the modern nation of Egypt. Maybe the most just thing to do would be to find the descendants of those who were buried with the artifacts and return them their family heirlooms? Or no, perhaps those descended from the artisans and slaves who created the artifacts? But what of the invaders of Egypt seeking to destroy the artifacts? Should we give them the artifacts? Destruction is perhaps undesirable, so maybe we can place them somewhere in the world with the best steward? Does this mean my family can be repatriated our ancestral lands in northern Cumbria? If we get to play that game, you may not like how it works out for you. Or maybe we can stop looking at history with a modern, nationlistic lens. Stop looking at it with our modern sense of values. Stop trying to apply our modern sense of justice and misbeliefs about what did and didn't happen hundreds, thousands of years ago.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
We're not trying to adapt history to our modern values. We're trying to answer a modern question. What to do with ancient artifacts. Continuity with the ancient past is muddled or impossible, but there is still a place they come from, and the possibility they belong there. Continuity is muddled or impossible, but it's true that some people and places have stronger claims to that continuity than others. It's also true that these were taken during a period of european plundering of resources of all kinds, and that we're heirs and beneficiaries to that plundering in other ways, as well as this one. It's a complicated question, involving history certainly. But in no was is this us trying to graft modern morals onto the past. But it is a moral question regarding the past, and modern morals are the only ones we have to guide our decisions.