Unplundering art
When spoils of war seized from Germany are returned, where can the line be drawn on the repatriation of other art treasures?
IN OR about 586BC, the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, the Chaldaean king of Babylon, took Jerusalem, and behaved as conquering soldiers have always done—from the Roman imperial campaigners to the Norsemen raiders and the Christian crusaders through to the combatants in the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia. So nobody should be surprised to read, in chapter 52 of the Book of Jeremiah in the Jerusalem Bible, that:
This article appeared in the Christmas Specials section of the print edition under the headline “Unplundering art”
From the December 20th 1997 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
Inside the last true political machine in America
What a town is like when one family runs everything
AI is stalking the last lions of Hollywood
The first actors to lose their jobs to artificial intelligence are four-legged
The truth about the passenger jet Putin’s men shot down
Investigating MH17, the crime that presaged the war in Ukraine
Meet the boffins and buccaneers drilling for hydrogen
The search is on for a clean fuel that could one day replace oil
The best sailors in the world
Why the vaka, vehicle for the extraordinary story of the peopling of Oceania, is enjoying a revival
Oceania’s wayfinding skills
The art of getting a vessel and its occupants from one place on a vast ocean to another