Egyptian Conference Shows 1970 Date Carries Little Meaning

My prior blog, "1970 Provenance No Safe Harbor for Egyptian Antiquities" see http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2010/03/pre-1970-provenance-no-safe-harbor-for.html has received further confirmation during the proceedings of Egyptian Antiquities Pharaoh's repatriation conference in Cairo. See http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_en&sid=aONUei5s1Gss

“Forget the legal issue,” Hawass said. “Important icons should be in their motherland, period.”

It seems concessions by the museum community to accept a 1970 provenance date have only encouraged demands for "more."

I suppose some will claim that Hawass' statement only applies to "important icons," but how one defines an "important icon" is also in the eyes of the beholder too. As set forth above in my original blog, apparently both Hawass and U.S. Customs consider a rather ordinary Egyptian sarcophagus to be an important enough "cultural icon" to throw the "1970 rule" out the window as well.