Jul
24
Just who holds the deeds to ancient artifacts—the institutes that house them or the countries they came from? Museums might want to bolt their collections to the floor, if a slew of 2006 court decisions are any indication.
In one example, the Republic of Iran just entered the fray as an unlikely ally alongside the University of Chicago in the latest landmark artifact case, disputing the ownership of 2,500-year-old Persian tablets an Illinois judge had recently ordered to be seized from the university’s museum and auctioned off for profit.