Posted on 01/05/2007 12:05:03 PM PST by blam
Why covet ancient chariots...
Richard Owen
ITALY Conservationists are campaigning for the return of a unique Etruscan “golden chariot” which is due to form the centrepiece of a new exhibition this Spring at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The chariot, found in 1902 by a farmer at Monteleone near Spoleto in Umbria, and sold to the Met the next year, dates back to the 6th century BC. It is the star attraction in a collection of antiquities to go on show at the $155 million (£80million) Leon Levy and Shelby White Court at the museum.
Villagers in Monteleone (population 651), say that it was exported illegally. The campaign comes as Italy is stepping up its battle to regain a number of allegedly looted antiquities from institutions including the Met and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
The farmer who found the chariot sold it — for two cows, according to some accounts — to dealers who allegedly smuggled it to New York.
Tito Mazzetta, a lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia, whose family came from Monteleone and who has taken up the case, said the Metropolitan Museum had so far refused to return the chariot, although it “has not produced any documentation to prove its legal provenance”.
Marion True, a former curator of antiquities at the Getty Museum, is currently on trial in Rome for allegedly acquiring stolen artefacts.
So what's on your land is not yours. Then it is not your land.
Walter Williams says that the proof of whether you own/control something is if you can sell it. He even extended that to his own organs (which he is prohibited from selling).
Probably 90% of the stuff in museums worldwide has doubtful provenance, if this is how one defines provenance.
The Elgin Marbles will have to be on the next boat to Greece, not to mention all the stuff in the Louvre . . .
This is a total waste of time. If the Elgin Marbles had stayed in Athens, they would be a puddle of calcium sulphate by now.
Very nice bronze piece. Look at the wheel bearings. What kind of grease did they pack those with?
Animal fat?
Carolyn
Yes, but what kind? Bear fat? Hog fat? Which is best? Maybe they didn't know as much as we know, but they knew stuff we never even thought of, and knew it when it counts. It would be total tragedy for the chariot wheels to seize up in the midst of battle because you used sheep fat instead of camel hide soaked in hot bear grease.
Pennzoil® Premium Wheel Bearing 707L Red Grease
The space aliens are interested in us for our brains. They use them to grease their machinery.
If they pick up congress-critters, their equipment will surly fail from lack of lubrication....
As the old saying goes, possesion is 9/10th of the law. Or to quote Ghenghis Khan on the law of conquest. "You may have what you can take, you may keep what you can hold"
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I want one!
In the biblical account of the Egyptians following the Hebrews into the parted Red Sea before becoming fish food, some versions read that God made the chariot wheels jam. The mad Pharoah had probably ordered the Egyptian army to drive the chariots well beyond their regreasing limits and the slogging in the wet sand couldn't have helped.
My dad had one, but we sold it in a garage sale.
To the Getty Museum.
;')
We've got some other stuff left... let's see... here's the skull of Julius Caesar, I could let that go for $5000.... if you don't want to spend that much, for $50 I can sell you this, it's the skull of Julius Caesar as a boy.
Ah, the classics never wear out...
whoops, sorry, you did that on purpose, I'm an idiot. Laminations it is!
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