Steve Green, the president of Hobby Lobby, one of the largest arts and crafts stores in the country, has set his plan into motion to open a colossal Bible museum in Washington, D.C. by 2017. As stated in Newser, the museum will cover over 400,000 square feet and will contain over 40,000 artifacts, objects, and biblical texts. The problem? Many of the artifacts that will be placed on display in the museum are illicit Iraqi artifacts that had been illegally imported from the Middle East and shipped to Green’s home base in Oklahoma in 2011.
According to USA Today, “clay tablets, thousands of years old and inscribed in ancient cuneiform” that were sent to Green’s residence in 2011 will decorate the D.C. gallery in 2017, along with tens of thousands of other ancient artifacts. Carly Summers, the head of the D.C. museum, told reporters that the only issue concerning the Iraqi tablets that were brought into the museum was that there was “incomplete paperwork” attached to them. However, other sources such as the Daily Beast were quick to point out that a minor logistical problem such as incomplete paperwork would not have drawn on for this long and turned the problem surrounding the Iraqi artifacts into the controversial issue that it is today.
“Instead,” quoted USA Today, “someone looking to bring in artifacts that should have never left their country of origin may have purposefully undervalued the antiquities so they could be smuggled in to the U.S.”
An anonymous source confided to the Daily Beast that many of these artifacts were marked as “hand clay tablets” on their FedEx forms and were estimated to cost around $300 each. As a result of utilizing these tagged prices, the museum is completely undervaluing the artifacts’ correct worth and concealing their identification as the cultural inheritance of Iraq.
“It’s just morally wrong,” said Samrawit Fesshaie, a first-year student at Colorado College. “It’s not right.”
As stated on the Newser website, Steve Green has spent millions of dollars on ancient manuscripts, including a partially complete book of the Psalms written on Papyrus paper. When asked about the Iraqi artifacts, Green claimed that while many of artifacts may have been illicitly imported from the Middle East, he did not know it at the time that they were imported to his home base. An investigation is currently taking place on Hobby Lobby and the illegally imported artifacts.
“I think they should be giving the artifacts back to where they belong,” says Cristina Garcia, another student at CC. “If it’s only for monetary purpose, I would say that it’s offensive. They are using cultural appropriation.”