I don´t agree. Most of the countries are chaotic and can not guarantee the safety and security of the artifacts as well as visitors.
Those artifacts belong humanity and not egypt for example. Today egypt has zero connection to this past egypt. But humanity has . It is our duty to protect it. It was watched through the chaos in egypt. In worst case troops had to be send into egypt to secure the most important artifacts and bring them to safety.
The fact of the matter is Markus, that it's an ancient Egyptian artifact. It's part of Egyptian history. Not German. If it was the opposite way around and this was a German artifact you would undoubtedly have demanded such an artifact to be handed back to Germany from whatever host country.
The fact is also that half of the artifacts in the most famous museums in Europe (I mentioned the two most famous - Louvre and The British Museum) are full of mainly artifacts from our ancient Semitic civilizations native to the present day Arab world. From ancient Arabia, to Egypt to Levant, to Mesopotamia to North Africa. Aside from those from other ancient civilizations in the world.
The link I posted shows that various European countries and Western (US included) returned 19.000 (!) ancient artifacts to KSA. Most of them were taken by early European archeologists and private Western (mainly Americans and Brits) Saudi Aramco employees without any respect for the host country and its heritage. The GCC has spent a lot of money for getting their stolen pre-Islamic artifacts and Islamic artifacts back and there have been cases of people selling those artifacts on Ebay. Can you imagine selling several millennium old artifacts in such a fashion? Imagine if someone sold ancient Roman and Greek artifacts on Ebay that were based in the ME or China or somewhere else.
At the same time I do appreciate and acknowledge the fact that it were Europeans who discovered much of the treasure houses of the ME and did most of the archaeological work although many World Unesco Heritage Sites were known by the locals in the Arab world but due to their Pagan past they were looked down upon or were either unknown for Westerner's due to their isolated location.
Here I can mention World UNESCO Heritage Sites such as Petra in Jordan, Mada'in Saleh in KSA, Hatra in Iraq etc. Those marvelous several millennium old architectural wonders were known for millenniums by the natives but European explorers and travelers first learnt about them 200-100 years ago.
I also agree that it is part of the human heritage and also that they should not be sent back if there are safety issues but that is not the case with most ME countries contrary to popular belief.
Egypt is perfectly capable of displaying their own heritage as
@Frogman explained.
P.S:
I have seen many Italians that could pass for Arabs/ME people and vice versa and I do not think that you look South East Asian (LOL) and your nose might be a consequence of you pumping severe iron. I have seen this type of nose among other bodybuilder types.
Also tons of Latinos (especially in Brazil, Argentina, Chile) have Arab ancestry and I see many familiar faces from Latin America.
Where is your mother from in Italy? North, Central or Southern Italy? Or maybe Sardinia?
The local owner of the closest pizzeria next to my apartment is an Italian from Siracusa (Southeastern Sicily). He has praised that city quite a lot and I know that it is the birth city of the famous Greek Archimedes.
He told me that the cuisine of Siracusa is famous in Italy so I did some research on my own.
Cucina siracusana - Wikipedia
Can you confirm this?
