Cultural Property, Essay Example

Cultural property is simply defined as rare and special objects that existed from a previous era of a particular city, world or even areas of the world where such an object would exist. Cultural property can be anything from a painting to an old-world Egyptian vase or even ruins from an old civilization such as from the time of the Olympian gods and Norsemen, old buildings, churches as well as old world temples and castles are all examples of cultural property. It can be argued that cultural property is anything that predates the written word such as from a time 2500 to 5000 years ago, shipwrecked ships from Blackbeard the Pirate’s time counts as cultural property because it tells a story of what life was like back in 18^th century.

The rules that should apply to the ownership and control of cultural property should be that cultural property is illegal to sell, those who do should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Cultural property should be left where it is and local museums as well as anthropologists should be contacted immediately, cultural property could get damaged from misuse. Those who find cultural property should claim it for themselves but the owner gives up his right to own that piece of cultural property if it leaves their possession.

The museums’ stand on cultural property and ownership is that it should be given to them, they know what to do with it and how to take care of it. The museums have a firm stance on the abuse and mistreatment of cultural property; it upsets them.