SCOTTISH museums must do more to acknowledge the colonial roots of their collections, and work harder to build relationships with those who could lay claim to the artefacts they hold, according to senior museum curators and researchers.

The calls come as the Egyptian authorities stepped up pressure on the National Museums of Scotland (NMS) last week to prove ownership of a casing stone, which it is claimed is from the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The Egyptian government has demanded the museum prove that it did not leave Egypt illegally and says it will take “all necessary measures” to recover the stone if NMS cannot.

The NMS insists that it has a legal title to the stone, which it says was found in a rubble heap by an engineer working for Scotland’s Astronomer Royal and transported to Edinburgh in 1872.

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The repatriation row is the latest in a long line of controversies about the origin of museum artefacts. The NMS is also subject to an ongoing claim to return two Beothuk indigenous tribe skulls to Newfoundland in Canada, following a campaign by chief Mi’sel Joe, head of the Miawpukek First Nation. As well as issues with ownership, researchers and campaigners have pointed to ethical issues around objects bought with wealth made by slave ownership and called for museums to delve deeper into the journeys their acquisitions have made from colonised countries to Scotland.

Mark O’Neill, former head of Glasgow Museums from 1998 until 2009 and now an associate professor at University of Glasgow, told the Sunday National that museums must engage with the issue.

Under his leadership an indigenous American “ghost shirt” held at the Kelvingrove Museum was returned to Canada in 1999 following a campaign by members of the Lakota Sioux tribe.

He acknowledged the pressures of budget cuts but said: “Museum and art galleries in Scotland – not just those with so called ‘ethnographic’ collections – should be reviewing their collections and displays from the point of view of world history and representing points of view of cultures represented in their collections.”

“The NMS should be providing intellectual leadership as they have the resources and international contacts to do the major strategic re-thinking required. However for most museums, the best thing to do, is to do something, however small, to start the process.

“Representing the truth of these realities is essential for the future of Scotland – as well as being fascinating for visitors to explore.”

His view was backed by Neil Curtis, head of museums and special collections at the University of Aberdeen. In the past 15 years the museum has repatriated tens of artefacts including a “sacred bundle” used in Indigenous American ceremonial cultures to go back into use by the Kainai First Nation in Canada and Maori human remains to be returned to New Zealand to Maori tribes.

He claimed that Scottish curators were on the whole not opposed to repatriation, with many doing lots of work internally to re-think and re-present their collections but said more could be done to meet their “ethical duty”.

“Scotland has a good international reputation for engaging with repatriation requests, but we also need to be more willing to be self-critical,” he said. “Scots have sometimes been too ready to play the victim and emphasise how their ancestors suffered from the Clearances and the industrial revolution, but there is a far tougher story to tell here about the Scottish responsibility for colonialism and slavery.”

However he stressed that the process was often complex. “It’s not just a question of good versus bad, or theft versus gift. A museum might know who has given them the item, but not how the collector acquired it, how they acquired the wealth to do so, or what the people who originally had it thought. While we may not be responsible for what happened in the past, we are responsible for how we deal with that legacy today.”

Alice Procter, a London-based researcher who runs Uncomfortable Art Tours believes that museums too often fall back on “triumphalist nostalgia”.

Her alternative tours aim to peel back the “whitewash” to find the narratives beneath. “Display it like you stole it” is her call to the museums where she offers tours including the British Museum and London’s National Portrait Gallery.

Yet she too believes that repatriation can be complex – the current row is as much about current power play as righting old wrongs, she claims. “The conquest is partly what makes this valuable,” she adds, pointing out that the Egyptian authorities are not always interested in the pyramid stones that have not left Egypt. “That’s why its critical that there is transparency.

“People love stories. A lump of stone with a label means much less than the story of how it travelled to Scotland. If the consequence of telling that story is repatriation then that’s still an important part of the narrative. “At the moment museums are still trying to protect themselves. They need to stop pretending they are infallible. They need to be open to change and not all historians are able to do that.”

In 2017 the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery commissioned the Past is Now, an exhibition that sought to highlight the city’s links to its colonial past and their impact on the present.

According to the curators – all women of colour – the process was impactful but challenging for all concerned. Writing in Media Diversified, Sumaya Kassim said staff found it difficult to hear criticism of the museum’s systemic racism. Though the group were given creative freedom they feared “the price of our honesty was any future chance to work with the museum”.

The Sunday National understands that several major Scottish museums are currently working on reviewing their collections with a “decolonisation agenda” but none would comment on their plans.

A spokesman for Glasgow Life, said: “We are committed to critically addressing legacies of Empire and we’re working with partners on how best to achieve this. No-one is shying away from the parts of our past that are difficult and Glasgow has a strong track record in not only acknowledging but recognising past wrongs. We will look to build on that and we will share future plans for objects and collections and the narratives around as them as work progresses.”

A major refurbishment of the Burrell Collection, more than 8000 works of art donated by the Glasgow by wealthy shipping magnate Sir William Burrell in 1944, is due for competition in 2020.

A spokeswoman for National Museums Scotland declined to comment on the “wider issues” but said in a statement: “We have in our collections a casing stone from the Great Pyramid of Giza. After reviewing all the documentary evidence we hold, we are confident that we have legal title to the stone and the appropriate permissions and documentation were obtained in line with common practice at the time.”