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If he did return them and that set a precedent, how many of the world's museum collections would then have to be also returned?

Mark O'Neill, director of Glasgow Museums, who has returned the Ghost Dance Shirt originally taken from the corpse of a Sioux warrior at the Battle of Wounded Knee, believes it could be as much as 10 percent for museums with major ethnographic collections: "It's all about values and ethics. A shirt that was ripped off the body of a dead Sioux had no business in our collection."

The looting of treasures has been going on at least since Biblical times. It is recorded in Chapter 52 of the Book of Jeremiah that "the Chaldaeans broke up the bronze pillars from the Temple of the Lord, the wheeled stands and the bronze sea that were in the Temple of Yahweh, and took all the bronze away to Babylon."

More recently, in World War II, Germany plundered 427 museums in the Soviet Union, taking the pick of them to Berlin. The National Gallery of Art in Washington coveted 202 paintings salvaged from the wreckage of Germany and "liberated" some of them. The decision was supported by Francis Henry Taylor, director of the Metropolitan Museum, who opined, "The American people have earned the right in this war to such compensation if they choose to take it."

American archive officers on the spot demurred. In the Wiesbaden Manifesto, they stated that "the transportation of these works to America establishes a precedent which is neither morally tenable nor trustworthy." President Truman agreed, and all the art taken to the United States for "safeguarding" was subsequently returned.

In another case of disputed museum holdings, the Trojan treasures now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow once belonged to the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte in Berlin. They were thought to have been destroyed until it was disclosed in 1991 that they had been taken to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Germany wants them back, but its claim is disputed by Turkey, which asserts that German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann excavated and smuggled them illegally from Turkey in the 19th century. When they were put on show at the Pushkin in April 1996, the Turkish ambassador to Moscow refused to attend the opening.

Similarly, various competing historical claims put the British Museum collection particularly at risk. Among them:

• The head of Rameses the Great (Egyptian, 1270 B.C.) and the Rosetta Stone (Egyptian, 196 B.C.). Taken in 1799 by a sharp-eyed French lieutenant who prevented its use as a building stone for a Napoleonic fort in the desert, the Rosetta Stone went to George III by Treaty of Alexandria in 1801 and provided the key to hieroglyphics. Egypt has asked for both of them back.

• Assyrian winged bull gateway, from Khorsabad, Iraq, c.710 B.C. In the 19th century, French and English teams competed to excavate thousands of tons of carved stone from Assyrian palace sites. Like Elgin, Henry Rawlinson bought these huge stone figures in 1850 under license from the Ottoman Empire -- a transaction now disputed.

• Easter Island statue. Cult image, made between 11th and 17th centuries. Collected by British survey ship HMS Topaze in 1868 and presented to Queen Victoria.

• Statue of A'a. French Polynesia, 18th century. Acquired from Christian converts by missionaries in the 1820s, bought from the London Missionary Society in 1911.

• Mexican Rock Crystal Skull. Either a unique survival of pre-Spanish conquest Mexican Aztec art or a 19th century fake. Bought from Tiffany's in New York in 1897.

• The Benin bronzes. Seized by a British punitive expedition in Nigeria in 1897 in revenge for an ambush in which nine British officers died. Auctioned in London by the Admiralty to cover the costs of the expedition. Twenty-five were returned in 1951, but when Member of Parliament Bernie Grant called for the repatriation of them all, the trustees commented, "we would regard it as a betrayal of trust to establish a precedent for the piecemeal dismemberment of the collections, which recognize no arbitrary boundaries of time or place."

Some Zuni Indian claims are equally contentious. In 1990, the U.S. Congress required museums to respond to requests from Native Americans for the return of "sacred objects and communally owned cultural patrimony." As a result, private collectors and art dealers, as well as museums, have sent many wooden gods back to New Mexico.

But the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, England, refused to return a wooden god in its collection. They replied that it was not a real one -- it was made by Frank Hamilton Cushing, an anthropologist. The Zunis retorted that the god was certainly authentic because it was made by Cushing with "Zuni knowledge."

The piece is still in Oxford, but for how long is anybody's guess. In the new world of international political correctness, pressures are building for a global treasure hunt.

One expert who appreciates the new mood is Ricardo Elia, professor of archaeology at Boston University and the editor of the Journal of Field Archaeology. "The only way to collect ethically, and without contributing to the looting problem," he says, "is to refrain from acquiring anything unless it can be proved to have been legally removed and exported from the country of origin."

Curators and collectors, look to your mantelpieces, empty your glass cases and prepare for the great swap of the 21st century. Maybe you'll get something from your country back in return.
salon.com | Feb. 5, 2000

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