Regret the Error

A review Sunday of the book “Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World” contained several errors. Randy Mehrberg is not “an energy tycoon.” He is a spokesman for Exelon Corp., an energy firm, whose CEO, John Rowe, kept an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus in his office; it was Rowe who donated the sarcophagus to a Chicago museum. The Metropolitan Museum’s Lydian Hoard was returned to Turkey, not Italy. Former Getty Museum curator Marion True has pleaded not guilty to charges in Italy, not Greece, for actions supposedly taken in Greece. She has not been convicted of any crime. Napoleon did not “lift” the Mona Lisa from the Italians. He took the Mona Lisa with him wherever he traveled as emperor, but it was already in French hands, having been bought by King Francis I, who gave Leonardo da Vinci a place at his court near the end of the artist’s life. Moreover, the newspaper inadvertently jumped the gun on the review; the book will be published in November.