But if we venture into moral criticism, then let's remember that for many ancient artifacts, they were in the process of being destroyed by the various local governments until Europeans came along. Greek papyri were being burned in scrap heaps for heat. Ancient pottery was being smashed and recycled for raw materials. Europeans had to come and decipher the hieroglyphs and Sumerian cuneiform because the local societies -- for whom these were the works of foreign civilizations -- had no idea what they meant and zero intellectual curiosity in studying these works. Arab Egypt had ownership of the rosetta stone for over a millennia and never bothered to try to learn from it and were unable to decipher the hieroglyphs. Europeans prized and valued this cultural product of other civilizations, they preserved it, often rescuing it from destruction, and they paid for it and put it in their museums.
Of course there were examples of terrible behavior by Britain in its Empire. She tolerated no rivalry, was ruthless, bloodthirsty and deceptive in diplomacy. She started wars. That's why we call her Perfidious Albion. But there were two areas where the UK was miles ahead of the various civilizations she conquered -- respect for property rights and respect for the cultural output of other societies. So these are the wrong things to get morally outraged about.
I feel like Last Week Tonight show about Museums was probably a decent overview of the state of things. I wonder, if you've seen it, you disagree with more than 10% of what's said?
I will take a look, but 35 minutes of John Oliver is a big ask.
Last time I watched him -- years ago -- he spent the entire segment in 100% outrage mode with a sledgehammer wall-of-sound style rhetoric in which nuance and empathy were entirely absent from his sequence of cherry-picked outrage nuggets.
But at the same time, I didn't find him very funny. Sam Kinison was also a loud outrage comic, but he was funny. But Kinison's yelling had an emotional honesty that Oliver lacked, since you can't really be too honest if you are doing politics on TV, especially partisan politics for the PMC class - a large amount of Oliver's material (that I saw) was basically mocking the beliefs of working class people. But perhaps he's changed. George Carlin was probably the one who made political comedy work the best, but he was deconstructing ideas that people have, and specifically ideas that you, the listener, had, often without questioning. That's what made people go "hmmm, that's interesting" when they listen to Carlin. Nobody says "Hmm, that's interesting" when listening to Oliver, they say "Boom! Nailed it! He's got their number!!" Subtlety, balance, making an honest effort to portray the complex world as it really is -- that was completely absent. It was all about caricaturing people or institutions as being unreasonable or suitable for mocking. Real life tends not to be like that.
I do wonder why people refer to Oliver as a news source or use him in arguments, it's basically the same thing as citing Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh was actually much kinder -- sure, he also cherry picked examples to make his opponents look like fools, but he usually treated them as confused fools ("young minds, full of mush") rather than malicious actors. Limbaugh was also often self-deprecating and was able to change tone so that it wasn't all full throttle attack mode. But still I wouldn't cite one of his shows as evidence to support my point, as that's clearly a partisan show that is meant to be entertainment for those who agree with him rather than any kind of reasoned investigation.
I think the representativeness is the most important aspect to think about -- most likely the show focuses on and exaggerates absurdities / hypocrisies that are happening for a bigger punch, and as you point out, at the cost of its own credibility.
I know quite little on the subject we've been discussing - and I got more clarity reading what you wrote and thinking about it.
Stay awesome!
Significant parallel texts were unknown until the rediscovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799. The Rosetta Stone was only deciphered as quickly as it was because Champollion had studied Coptic, a then-known and later form of the written Egyptian languages in question. If it weren't for Coptic Christians preserving their language, our understanding of Egyptian would probably be 150 years behind where it is now. If significant parallel texts were known in Egypt in 1000 CE, I'd be surprised if the Egyptians themselves wouldn't have cracked it by 1800 CE.
Also, Arab scholars did try to decipher hieroglyphs. See Ayub Ibn Maslama, Dhu Al-Nun Al-Misri, Ibn Wahshiyah, and Abu Al-Qasim Al-Iraqi.
I guess the word "stolen" could have a legalistic interpretation, but there's surely a moral one as well. And I think the legal discussion is entirely uninteresting -- of course a country can write whatever law they want and follow it. What is interesting to me is whether the law and/or act is moral.