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Lintel 25 from Yaxchilan, Mexico, was taken by explorer Alfred P. Maudslay to London at the end of the 19th Century. It is now part of a permanent exhibit at the British Museum.
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Kudos to The Miami Herald for its front page story by Tyler Bridges on the struggle by Peru to get back from Yale University artifacts taken from the World Heritage site of Machu Picchu in the early 20th century. It is time for the big and powerful museums in the First World, those filled with archaeological marvels taken at a time when laws and awareness of their value were different, to return key pieces that represent their heritage to countries with a rich past and not so rich present. Bridges mentions what the British call the Elgin Marbles but the Greeks call the frieze of the Parthenon, of which also France has parts. Egypt is in a battle with the British Museum and Berlin’s Egyptian Museum to return to its proper owners the Rosetta Stone and the bust of Nefertiti, two key pieces in the ancient history of Egypt. The British Museum also has on special display from the ancient Mexican Maya city of Yaxchilan, two stone lintels considered by many experts as the pinnacle of Maya stone work. Vienna has Moctezuma’s headdress and Harvard’s Peabody holds part of Copan’s Hieroglyphic Stairway, one of that Maya city’s true treasures. (Two Harvard professors have been involved in the decipherment and reconstruction of the stairway in the Honduran site for almost two decades. But the only complete sculpture of one of the seated rulers is on display at the Peabody.)
For years, these great museums have claimed that had it not been for their rescue, these pieces would’ve been left to the elements, or even worse, to human ignorance. That was then. Now, Egypt, Greece, Mexico Honduras and Peru, among others, are capable and prepared to keep their own treasures.
Marta Barber, President
Institute of Maya Studies
July 2007
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