BOOK REVIEW = Looters

[L. Coyote]

BOOK REVIEW = Looters
Jenifer Neils - http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/looters

LOOT: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World. Sharon Waxman. xvi + 414 pp. Times Books, 2008. $30.

WHO OWNS ANTIQUITY? Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage. James Cuno. xl + 228 pp. Princeton University Press, 2008. $24.95.

On April 19th, 2005, a Russian Antonov 124 transport touched down on a runway in Axum, Ethiopia. Its cargo was the middle section of a 1,700-year-old, 78-foot-tall, 160-ton granite obelisk, which had been removed from Ethiopia in the 1930s by Benito Mussolini, who erected it in front of his newly built Ministry of Italian Africa in central Rome. The cost to the Italians for disassembling this monument and transporting it back to Ethiopia in three parts was reportedly $7.7 million.

The obelisk of Axum was not the only piece of cultural property returned to its country of origin in 2005. The British Museum ..................