US museum returns ancient Egyptian stele missing since WWII

WilliamBoyd8

Active member
Only posted here because the article mentions The Man.

From The Associated Press:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/9ae32a5d-df56-38dc-a7b4-d9c86843bb5e/ss_us-museum-returns-ancient.html

BERLIN ? An ancient artifact lost in the chaos of World War II. An American scientist hunting for Nazi secret weapons. An archaeologist who dug into dusty archives to prove a hunch.

What sounds like the plot of an Indiana Jones movie is turning into a happy end for a German museum that feared it had lost a treasured stone tablet from ancient Egypt.

Research showed a Dutch-American scientist, Samuel Abraham Goudsmit, had purchased the stele in 1945 from a private collector in Germany and bequeathed it to the Michigan museum, the foundation said.

Goudsmit was the scientific head of a secret U.S. army mission investigating Nazi Germany?s efforts to build a nuclear bomb, as well as an enthusiastic amateur archaeologist.

The Kelsey Museum agreed to return the stele, which will be displayed in Berlin from next month.

:)
 

InexorableTash

Active member
And they return it to Egypt when?

(Repatriation of cultural artifacts is a complex issue. I find it amusing here as the authors of the article appear completely blind to the issue, missing the inherent irony of the situation.)
 

WilliamBoyd8

Active member
The Egyptian government allowed the stele to go to England sometime before 1910 when it was sold to the German museum.

:)
 
Top