[CPProt.net] How to steal history

[MSN CPPnet]

How to steal history

June 6, 2005

ONE morning in the early 1960s, the cultural and historical community of
Manila woke up to a nightmarish newspaper banner headline - the original
manuscript of Jose Rizal's Ultimo Adios was missing from its frame. 


It was one of those priceless historical documents at the National Museum
then located on Taft Avenue, near Herran St.

Many were aghast over the loss or maybe the theft. They thought the
government was negligent and did not provide adequate security to such a
vital document, certainly part of the country's history.

Manila police believed it was stolen but even the best sleuths of Manila's
Finest could not provide a lead, much less a suspect. Everybody was resigned
to the loss and bade farewell to ever seeing the Ultimo Adios again.

Then one day, after almost two weeks since museum officials reported the
loss, Sen. Salvador Laurel received a call from an anonymous caller. The
stranger said he was bothered by his conscience and was returning the
document to the senator.

The manuscript was recovered all right. A disgruntled janitor in the museum
admitted having stolen the original from its frame.

It was fortunate that not a single centavo was spent by the government in
recovering Ultimo Adios.

A couple of years ago, there were reports in media that important documents,
books, manuscripts, maps, and original copies, were just lying in one corner
of a government office. Certainly, they were an invitation to burglary by
callous persons with an eye to selling those vital records to private
collectors here and abroad.

In a parallel incident, the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities admitted that
Egypt is one of the most vulnerable places on earth for theft of artifacts.

"Seventy percent of our relics remain buried," an official of the museum
told the National Geographic TV channel a fortnight ago. 

One episode featured in Interpol Investigates narrated how one British
national took the head of the statue of a pharaoh and smuggled it out of
Egypt without being detected by customs police at the Cairo airport.

What the thief did was to paint the face of the detached head with crudely
fashioned colors to make it appear as if the head was just a replica or a
mask.

The British smuggler was not able to sell the relic to some London
collectors because of a British law that prohibits the buying of foreign
artifacts from unregistered sources.

A sly fortune-hunter, the Britisher instead sold it to a licensed dealers in
South Africa who in turn offered it to the British Museum.

The prospective sale never materialize because Scotland Yard was alerted and
promptly arrested the thief.

http://www.mb.com.ph/