>Modern Egyptians have almost no dna connection to ancient Egyptians.

That's just false. Modern Egyptians are quite clearly and cleanly descended from Bronze Age Egyptians. There's quite a bit of African and Arabic input, but not to the point of the population being unrecognizable.

It's nearly impossible to replace a settled, agricultural population with immigration. There needs to be active, systemic policy of ethnic purge.

It would be a fair point to say they have little to no cultural connection to pre-Islamic Egypt, but bringing genetic into the mix is specious.

Did you read the linked article by parent poster? There could be maybe made an argument that Copts are the descendants of ancient Egyptians:

https://mobile.twitter.com/bewilderedcopt/status/10817763566...

All the linked article showed is that they gained 8% sub-saharan ancestry. That's not much of a shift.

I've seen a lot of ethnonationalist rhetoric online by middle eastern christian groups stating that they are the true heirs to the region, and that this is justifiable by genetics. I would take such claims with a large wheelbarrow of salt.

Looking further up that thread, someone else said:

>And BTW the Coptic Christians in Egypt are the REAL Egyptians not Arab invaders.

It seems to be the scientific consensus. I personally don't think genetics carry any hereditary claim to a thousand years old culture but it always bothers me to see people go against state of the art scientific conclusions (unless they have good evidence of their own).

>Copts share the same main ancestral component than North African and Middle East populations (dark blue), supporting a common origin with Egypt (or other North African/Middle Eastern populations). They are known to be the most ancient population of Egypt and at k = 4 (Fig.3), they show their own component (dark green) different from the current Egyptian population which is closer to the Arabic population of Qatar.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4446898/

Ah I get it, the savages don't deserve it.

Who said anything about DNA?

Regardless, it's heinous to justify a crime like this. It also leaves an extremely bitter taste to come across a museum in Europe with artifacts stolen during some more blatantly colonial period that they forgot to return.

There's nothing to return. Europeans are doing a service to humanity by preserving the history of our collective past. Look at what happened with the artefacts that were left behind: destruction at the hands of invaders, sometimes sponsored by the polity of the time.

Look at what ISIS did to the pre-Islamic artefacts present in the territory they controlled.

Look what Saddam Hussein did (even with somewhat good intentions) by trying to "modernize" the remains of the Ishtar Gate for the consumption of the local people, while ignoring pleas from archæologists to let them thoroughly review the sites beforehand.

I, for one, am thankful that I can go to the Louvre and learn about our shared ancient history, rather than these artefacts ending up as a paper weight in some oligarch's office, as would have been bound to happen otherwise.

I had this same discussions with a group of New Zealand'ers a few weeks ago on reddit. I was so surprised that the vocal commenters thought it best to return all artifacts to their rightful owners. I tried to point out that one person's rightful owner is another's despot, and what about all the examples of things being destroyed at the hands of poor stewardship? The main retort was "New Zealand is not some backwater country" which of course I agree but where do you draw the line? That's when I backed away slowly realizing the frothing mob was not interested in preserving shared history as much as revenge/retribution for colonial slights.

I'd like to add something:

We went to Iran for our holiday and we went to Persepolis and often enough it was mentioned that certain items (small and very big) are not here but you can see them in London or Paris ...

It is quite irritating to be honest traveling from Europe to Iran and realizing how much actually is at home.

Nonetheless, while i think this is not an easy topic, we europen were who traveled there and realized that this thing is actually worth digging out and saving. Before those stones got taken away slowly and steadily.