On the season finale of Stuff the British Stole…
For years, visitors to the British Museum have been puzzled by an exhibit: a sphinx that looks almost identical to those from Egypt, except it’s not from Egypt.
It’s actually from Haida Gwaii, a stunning archipelago on Canada’s west coast. It was carved by the Haida Indigenous people. How – and why – did they create a perfect replica of an Egyptian sphinx?
If you turn the sculpture around, you will notice a tiny detail that begins to unravel this wild story.
Marc Fennell takes us to Egypt, where the original Sphinx stands tall, across the seas to the epic windswept landscapes of Haida Gwaii, and back to London, the heart of the empire, in his quest to unravel the mystery.
The ravages of smallpox also had a crucial impact on the journey of the mysterious sculpture. By the late 1870s, the Haida population had declined dramatically, with many villages left empty. It’s in one of those villages that the British Museum catalogue claims that the sphinx was found. But how did it make its way to one of the most famous museums in the world?
This episode explores the impact of religion and missionaries in Indigenous communities, through the story of one of the most surprising objects in the British Museum, and one already wrapped in mystery.
8pm Monday on ABC.
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