Reddit reviews Loot

Never going to happen.

There's a book entitled Loot: The Battle Over Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World which, after many chapters covering Italian, Egyptian, and Greek treasures, puts forward a single, simple argument: if a single major museum were to return ancient treasures, every single museum in the world would be inundated with demands.

Most regional museums don't have the resources to adequately keep, secure, protect, and promote ancient treasures. Cairo, Baghdad, and Addis Ababa, are simply not prepared to shoulder the burden of protecting humanity's history and culture. At least, not yet. Then there's the issue of tourism, in that if the regional museum is too remote and inaccessible, or in a country that tourists won't visit, the ancient treasure will not be seen by the public and will quickly fade from cultural history, becoming a footnote.

Items in London, New York, and Paris, are seen, appreciated, discussed, investigated, and remembered by hundreds of thousands of people every year, many of whom are discovering these items and their stories for the first time. The money earned by those museums goes toward specialized teams that hunt for objects around the world, working in the gray and black markets to recover stolen items, or to find them for the first time.

From a moral perspective, attempting to impose modern museum ethics on items taken in the 1860s is a non-starter. Back then, there was no indication the local governments would ever protect these treasures of humanity - our shared history and culture - and there was a very real risk that, given the region's instability, the items would be looted, disappear, or be destroyed. By all accounts, Ethiopia ought to thank the British for saving and promoting a part of their history and culture. But the British can't say that, as it smacks of cultural superiority (an attitude the British were all too guilty of espousing during the Empire's era) and is frankly insulting. Instead, curators of the largest museums keep their mouths shut, deny almost 99.9% of all requests in order to avoid opening Pandora's Box.

Loot - Its an easy read since its written for the general public and not museologists but it covers the bases of looted antiquities through case studies.

http://www.amazon.com/Loot-Battle-Stolen-Treasures-Ancient/dp/0805090886

https://www.amazon.com/Loot-Battle-Stolen-Treasures-Ancient/dp/0805090886/