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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Blake Davis, post: 24802758, member: 91820&quot;]Provenance is one thing authenticity is another - if it is authentic who cares where it came from as long as it wasn’t stolen?&nbsp; By stolen I mean from someone else not some modern nation state since none have a legitimate claim to these objects.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Provenance to satisfy some claim of cultural patrimony shouldn’t be a crime - the idea that modern nation states have the right to ownership of “cultural artifacts” is absurd.&nbsp; Should the US government claim ownership if I buy a parcel of land and find civil war artifacts?&nbsp; On what possible basis?&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>This is even more true with respect to the nonsense claimed by modern governments that it somehow owns artifacts made thousands of years in the past.&nbsp; In Greece this leads to such artifacts being tossed into the sea, if for example, artifacts are found during property development.&nbsp; Great way to preserve the past.</p><p><br /></p><p>These claims are relatively recent and utterly without a rational legal basis especially when it comes to coins.&nbsp; What if the modern government is itself illegitimate? Suppose for example that NAZI Germany made claims as to ancient artifacts - would these honored?&nbsp; Or the Mullahs in Iran?&nbsp; Or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? Or does the government have to be somehow legitimate- or does even tyrannical regimes get a pass for in this instance making “legitimate” claim?</p><p><br /></p><p>This just illustrates the absurdity of modern nation states making claims of ownership of ancient artifacts based on an absurd claim of cultural patrimony. Or perhaps if it is a UN Treaty it should be honored, as if that entity is entitled to any deference especially given recent events.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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