Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Greek Archaeologists Point Fingers

Here is more evidence the Greek archaeological community is seriously out of touch. See http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107369

Expressions of international solidarity will do little to make up for slashed budgets, and fantasies about artifacts being stolen to order by wealthy Western collectors can't justify lax security.

The Greek cultural establishment needs to cope with the economic meltdown facing the country, and stop making excuses.

The first step to salvation is for Greece to end overregulation of everything old, and instead sell off duplicate artifacts. That will free up funds to help protect Greece's true cultural treasures.

2 comments:

kyri said...

hi peter,
"fantasies about artifacts being stolen to order by wealthy collectors"
do you honestly believe that this is a "fantasie"
just last week we had two quin dynasty pieces stolen from a british museum and the police said
"the items were probably stolen to order for a foreign collector"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-17637834

there is no other possible explanation for stealing a well documented artifact that would be impossible to sell on the licit market,is there ??

Cultural Property Observer said...

Well, the same claim was made for material from the Iraq museum, and it instead turned out that most of the material was likely either grabbed by locals or insiders or stolen years before by Iraqi Government officials.

And we just heard the same BS about material stolen from the Egypt museum, but again there are suspicions that was an inside job.