Tag: British Museum

Blinged-Up Egyptian Mummies Not Welcome in UK!

British MPs Call for “Deportation” of Unwanted Egyptian Migrants! (13.3.2025)

Many of these mummies arrived well before the Windrush generation – with none ever living in a British colony. It is believed the final leg of the journey saw the mummies arrive from the continent in small boats – imported by unscrupulous smugglers – for nefarious purposes. Once in the UK, such incomers become very difficult to remove, due to Human Rights legislation. The numbers then often multiply – as family members are discovered in their home countries (usually in a state of vagrancy) – and imported into the UK to complete highly lucrative exhibitions and displays.

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Disability in Ancient Egypt!

Disability History Month: British Museum – Eight Histories of Disabled People in Ancient Egypt! (18.12.2024)

Disabled people have always been present and active in society. Many specialists and experts around the world have started to investigate representations and lived experiences of disability and care in the past through archaeology and museum collections. The objects and remains highlighted here demonstrate some of the stories we are uncovering and hint at the discoveries that might be made in the future. We hope that these stories will demonstrate to everyone that disabled people have always existed and been part of the story of humanity, and empower disabled people to see themselves in history, and to continue making it, thousands of years into the future.

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UK: British Museum Faces Renewed Calls to Return Cultural Relics! (7.9.2023)

“They are the subject of loot. They were illegally taken out of the country,” Tijani said. He demanded the British Museum give back the Benin Bronzes, which British forces took in 1897.

“It is irrespective whether they are safe there. That is not an issue. The issue is that these are stolen artefacts, and they should be returned to Nigeria to the communities that they belong to,” he added.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Afrikan Reparations, threw light on the “insulting ridiculousness” of the British Museum’s refusal to return artefacts to their country of origin on security grounds.

“One of the most insulting reasons that they’ve given is that the other countries that these items belong to would either not be able to take care of them or they are likely to be stolen,” she said. “But you’ve got people in this country putting them on eBay.”

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Alexamenos Graffito: Was the Earliest Depiction of Jesus Christ – a Crucified Man with a Donkey’s Head? (6.9.2023)

Although this object originates from the Roman graffiti scratched into the plaster of a wall found in a room of a building (the ‘domus Gelotiana’ or ‘House of Gelotian’) – situated in the Palatine Hill area of Rome (modern Italy – the object subsequently being relocated to the Palatine Museum) – it could be that the ‘artist’ was inspired by the (197 CE) writing of Tertulliani or that Tertulliani was motivated in 197 CE by the already existing graffiti. A third scenario is that Tertulliani and the graffiti are unrelated – but that both represent an underlying and common reality – the essence of which both are referencing. Depending upon the exact date – the ‘Alexamenos Graffiti’ may well be the ‘earliest’ depiction relating to Christianity – albeit in a derogatory form. The crude Greek text scratched under the cross reads ‘ΑΛΕ ΞΑΜΕΝΟϹ ϹΕΒΕΤΕ ΘΕΟΝ’ – which seems to say ‘Alexamenos Ingests [his preferred] God’.

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China: British Museum – “No Idea” How Much Loot It Possesses – Or Where It Might Be! (28.8.2023)

The Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies collected in the British Museum is the closest copy of the prestigious Chinese painting by Gu Kaizhi. It is one of the most famous collections of the museum. It was plundered from the court of the Qing Dynasty during the Siege of Beijing by the Eight-Nation Alliance in 1900.

There are very few tri-colored Luohan statues of the Liao Dynasty in the world and those collected in the British Museum were stolen overseas from the Yixian County, Hebei Province.

The British Museum has refused to return the cultural relics over the years mainly on the grounds and basis of the British Museum Act, which was amended by the British Parliament in 1963 and basically prohibits the museum from returning any of its collections.

The British leading human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC said “The trustees of the British Museum have become the world’s largest receivers of stolen property, and the great majority of their loot is not even on public display.”

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