In the tour of the Nubian exhibit, the main point of the exhibit was to show how much of what we thought was Egyptian because of how history seems to be “rewritten” when artifacts are stolen and taken in to the history of the new culture/group. No one had even heard of Nubia, so it brings us to doubt the authenticity of Egypt’s history and whether they had taken anything else from the other regions. Same goes for the whipping post, where, because it was placed into a different context, we assumed it was something that it really wasn’t. (The whipping post was not involved in slavery times).

Then when we get into the Black Panther clip, Kilmonger takes back the vibranium tools because the tools are actually Wakandian and not from Benin’s Fula tribe. Which is kind of ironic since the museum is in Great Britain, not Benin, but that’s not the main point. He then proceeds to actually take the tools back.

While we can see the similarities to be in the fact that in both scenarios, there’s the question of “should the items be returned to the owner?”, but these seem to be put in different contexts since the tools in the Black Panther clip have a real purpose in the modern world outside of being part of a museum – they can still use the vibranium. Whereas with the Nubian exhibit artifact, there would be no real purpose of the artifacts other than as museum exhibits. The arguments presented in the articles seem to say that either they should be kept where they are for the education of the culture outside of the culture itself, or returned because of the possibility of being misinterpreted.

Personally, I’m glad that “because it belongs to them” isn’t a main reason for the return of the artifact because then we could go through a huge list of events where one country has wronged another and it would take forever to actually right those wrongs. Nevertheless, I don’t really think that the possibility of misinterpreting a culture is really a big possibility because a lot of time and effort is put in by historians to make sure they get this type of thing correct, and ethnographies are done to make sure the culture is well represented. Ideally, I do feel that the owners of a specific artifact should make an effort to return their artifacts since it is the ethical thing to do, but it doesn’t always work out like that. Otherwise, I’d have to say that I believe the artifacts should for the most part remain where they are since it would be a huge hassle to put everything back where it belongs.