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From the world-famous Koh-i-noor diamond to the Rosetta Stone, British royalty have long received rare items that activists want to repatriate to their rightful lands.
Prince George is apparently the last in the line of fire, after ecologist and national treasure Sir David Attenborough, who is on a family vacation in Malta more than 50 years ago, gave him a giant prehistoric shark tooth. .
Images of the delighted seven year old boy examining his treasure they were released by Kensington Palace over the weekend, after Attenborough visited the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for a private viewing of their new environmental documentary A Life on Our Planet.
But the kind gesture has caused consternation in Malta, a British colony until 1964 of which the queen was head of state until 1974, and a country very close to her heart since she spent her first years of marriage with Prince Philip settled there as a naval . officer’s wife.
Malta’s Culture Minister José Herrera has vowed to investigate whether the tooth should, in fact, be returned for display on the island where it was originally excavated, according to reports.
The fossilized tooth, which is embedded in soft yellow limestone, is believed to be about 23 million years old and once belonged to a Carcharocles megalodon, an extinct species of giant shark that could grow up to 16 meters (52 feet long.
Megalodon teeth are said to be relatively common fossils in many places, according to FossilEra.com. The reason for this is that the Megalodon and other sharks shed their teeth during their lifetime or while growing up. According to the website, an adult shark could shed thousands of teeth.
When asked by the Times of Malta if there were plans to add the tooth to the nation’s heritage collection, Herrera said it would “get the ball rolling.”
“There are some artifacts that are important to Malta’s natural heritage, which ended up abroad and deserve to be recovered,” he said.
“No wonder we pay a lot of attention to historical and artistic artifacts. However, this is not always the case in our natural history. I am determined to lead a change, ”the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Fossils fall within the definition of cultural heritage as a “movable or immovable object of geological importance” and, according to the provisions of the Cultural Heritage Act of 2002, their removal or excavation is now expressly prohibited, reported the Times of Malt.
Kensington Palace has been contacted for comment
The British royal family has long faced requests for repatriation of various famous items, many of them looted and looted by explorers or soldiers over centuries or acquired through colonization.
These include the world’s largest diamond, the Koh-i-noor (Mountain of Light), which is reportedly worth more than £ 100 million, and the star piece of the crown worn by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother at the coronation of George VI, and again at the queen’s coronation in 1953. Currently it is part of the crown jewels.
The 105 carat diamond, possibly mined at the Kollur Mine, India, was part of the Mughal Peacock Throne and changed hands several times between various factions in South and West Asia until it was ceded to Queen Victoria after the British annexation of the Punjab in 1849.
The governments of India, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan have claimed legitimate property. There have been demands for its return since India gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1947, rejected by the British government, which has insisted that it was obtained legally under the terms of the Lahore Treaty. In recent years, a group of Bollywood stars and business owners instructed lawyers to initiate proceedings for her return.
A statue of a king’s head, presented to the current queen by former Nigerian President Gen Yakubu Gowon, was later revealed to be a genuine bronze from Benin dating back to 1600 after it was displayed in 2002 as part of the Royal Collection. Trust.
There have been sustained calls for the return of the Benin Bronzes, a group of sculptures and plaques, many now in the British Museum, that once decorated the royal palace in the kingdom of Benin, now part of Nigeria.
The Rosetta Stone, the rock stele that allowed researchers to read hieroglyphs, is believed to have been found by soldiers in the Nile Delta, and the British took possession of it after Napoleon’s defeat in 1801.
George III offered it to the British Museum a few months after his arrival in Portsmouth in 1802. Egyptian officials have demanded its return for decades. A similar argument has developed over the Parthenon marbles, a series of Greek sculptures purchased in the UK at around the same time and also in the British Museum.
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