A small museum with priceless collections in a beautiful setting. Employees who are dedicated to conveying knowledge to the public and school classes. The Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities is a medium-sized museum in the city center, actually far too small for its magnificent collections of objects from different countries. The client is the public, who pay their salaries and finance the operation with their tax money. It is the task of the officials to serve up as attractive and educational exhibitions as possible in order to enlighten, teach and open up for conversation.

Their next big task is – or has been until now– to preserve the treasures that linger in the dark storerooms. The employees' fervent desire has always been to someday show visitors more objects than those currently on display in the various rooms above ground. Stingy government funding does not allow for lavish exhibitions, but the museum's objects have their own brilliance and that is often enough to give them an appealing environment for visitors.

Lots of ancient objects are hidden in the storerooms. How unnecessary it was to dig them out of the ground when they now seem to be the most in the way. Transformed from unique cultural treasures and a global common cultural heritage into an annoying and extremely bulky burden.

Closing museums also means responsibility for thousands of objects from historical times, which are far too important to be handled by people with no interest in these priceless treasures. Do politicians plan to sell them or what will happen to the 12,000 objects acquired through excavations, donations and purchases? It also costs large sums to store them in storehouses that also need to have a suitable climate and supervision.

 We are shocked that political power can literally erase something we thought was permanent overnight – a museum with thousands of objects and well-attended exhibitions. The halls with exhibitions and sculptures have been an important part of education for children and young people and a resting place for adult visitors. A political decision now throws everything over the edge.

A far-reaching politicization of our state museums has led to a contempt for knowledge. Merits and expertise have become disadvantages rather than advantages. It becomes really difficult when experience and knowledge are considered an obstacle to efficiency. Knowledge is replaced by marketing and administration.

The world-famous Cyprus collections at the museum have been visited by foreign researchers from the US in the West to Japan in the East since the 1950s. There, the objects are considered indispensable for research and teaching. Not so in Sweden, not even at universities.

During the Second World War, Winston Churchill was criticized in Parliament for spending so much money on culture. He gave a very insightful answer: “Otherwise, what would we have to fight for?”