Opinion: The British government has finally recognized the contested history of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, but refuses to do so in regard to the other thousands of stolen artifacts currently residing in the British Museum.
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On May 6, the coronation of King Charles III took place at Westminster Abbey. This was a symbolic ceremony involving the crowning of King Charles III and Queen Camilla, as well as several other traditions and customs dating back more than 1,000 years.
For example, St Edward’s Chair — the Coronation Chair — is believed to be the oldest piece of furniture in the U.K.; made in 1300, it has had 27 monarchs crowned in it.
The monarch to be crowned also traditionally wears St Edward’s Crown while the Queen’s consort crown has, since the 18th century, been commissioned new for each queen. This year though, Queen Camilla wore Queen Mary’s crown, borrowed from the Tower of London and fitted with the Cullinan Diamonds.
This decision was made in response to the use of the controversial Koh-i-Noor diamond.
Believed to be cursed, the 105.6 carat diamond originated in modern-day India hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. Despite mixed reports of the diamond’s history, we now know it traveled between the Mughal, Persian, Afghan and Sikh empires before becoming a part of the British Crown Jewels.
Today, countries including India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran each claim ownership of the diamond and demand that it be returned. However, it remains in the Tower of London and is advertised as a “symbol of conquest.”
But this is what the U.K. is known for, profiting off the colonization of the rest of the world and proudly displaying the millions of “symbols of conquest” at the infamous British Museum.
Currently, the British Museum has over 8 million objects, only 1% of which are displayed at a given time. The problem is, of these 8 million objects, nearly 99% of them were stolen from the rest of the world and there is little-to-no chance of them ever being returned.
Take the Rosetta Stone, first stolen by Napoleon Bonaparte’s army and then stolen from the French by the British after they defeated the French in 1801, for example. The Egyptian Museum is only able to display a copy of the real stone with a sign essentially stating, “sorry we can’t display the real thing, it’s at the British Museum.”
Or there are the Parthenon Marbles, Greek marbles depicting the celebration of the goddess Athena’s birthday and the battle between Athena and Poseidon. The marbles were stolen during the Ottoman Empire’s rule over Greece when the British Ambassador at the time petitioned the removal of the marbles from the Parthenon. The Acropolis Museum in Athens doesn’t even have a copy of the marbles; instead there is a blank space where the marbles ought to be.
These objects are invaluable to their original countries’ histories, so much so that the British Museum’s own website has an entire page called “Contested objects from the collection.”
Besides well-known collections and pieces of art such as the Rosetta Stone or Parthenon Marbles, the museum is home to over 6,000 human remains from around the world.
Truly, if it weren’t for the size of objects such as the Great Pyramids, the British Museum would probably house those, too. Instead, they had to settle for stealing everything that was inside of them.
This insanely large collection of stolen objects is finally posing a challenge for the British Museum, according to a report by the Historic England and the Arts Council England department released this year.
“The clock is ticking — we’ve got four or five years before we really start to have massive problems,” Barney Sloane of Historic England said.
The lack of space in the British Museum means that current British archeological digs and discoveries will cease to occur, and objects that are found will not be displayed, leaving valuable history unknown.
The simple solution to this — contrary to hiring massive amounts of people for construction and clearing the land to expand the storage capacity of the British Museum — is to give the stolen objects back. But of course it can’t be that simple; why would it be?
In 1963, the British Museum passed the British Museum Act, legally prohibiting the museum from being able to sell, dispose or give away any of the objects in their collections.
According to this act, the museum may only dispose of an object if it is a duplicate, the Trustees do not believe it fit to remain in the collection or it can be disposed of without any detriment to the interest of the public.
The issue of reparations is complex — far too much to discuss in one short opinion column — but it is representative of the larger issue of power structure imbalances, such as the British government and its lasting control over other countries.
While there may have been concerns at the time of these objects being stolen that they would get destroyed in war or stolen by a different country instead, these concerns are no longer applicable today. These pieces should be returned to their rightful owners, not only for the benefit of the British Museum but for the cultural and historical significance of those who the objects were seized from.
