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December 4, 2024 - 7:00am
After over 200 years, the longest running cultural quarrel in the West might well be finally close to reaching a resolution. According to a Guardian exclusive, talks between the Greek government and the British museum over the potential return of the Parthenon marbles back to Athens are “well advanced”.
While a final agreement isn’t imminent, this development is significant. That’s because the Starmer administration is more open to a potential relocation of the marbles than the previous government, with reports suggesting that it is warming to the idea of a “long-term loan”. Meaning, the Labour government wouldn’t stand in its way if a final agreement was reached.
Ever since Lord Elgin hacked those friezes, metopes and pediments from their bases, with permission from the Ottomans, and sold them to the British Museum, British opinion has been polarised on possession of these treasures between two major groups: those who argue that Elgin’s campaign actually rescued those marbles from the Ottomans, and those who feel that what Elgin did was desecration.
Lord Byron, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, gave a teary tribute to the Parthenon whose “mouldering shrines removed By British hands, which it had best behooved, to guard those relics neer to be restored” and excoriated Lord Elgin for being a “plunderer”. Down the years, Byron’s basic point that Britain committed an act of cultural vandalism that ought to be restituted has been taken up by the likes of Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry. Indeed, many Britons now realise it is politically incorrect to refer to them as the “Elgin marbles”. Successive YouGov polls have also indicated that a majority of Britons agree that the marbles should be returned to Greece.
Western museums have been on the end of a slew of claims from various parties for the repatriation of artefacts that were looted during the colonial period to their “rightful” owners. Such claims make the British Museum in particular anxious as they feel if it gives in on the Parthenon Marbles then other parts of its collection will be vulnerable.
But the case of the Parthenon marbles is sui generis. While there’s plenty of Greek ethno-nationalism involved, the chief argument for its reunification is not based on cultural nationalism or a silly navel-gazing need for Britain to “atone” for Lord Elgin’s colonial pillaging; they were once part of a singular whole that was disintegrated into the mere sum of its parts. In other words, the case for reunification is artistic and humanist. Germany and Italy have already returned fragments of the Marbles to Greece to aid the project of reunification and restoration of the Acropolis Museum in Athens, and Britain should follow suit; it makes no sense to wrench apart, and keep apart, a glorious work of art.
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SubscribeAt the time , Greece was under the control of the Ottoman Empire and the Parthenon was being used as a mosque.
Why is it wrong to rescue cultural artefacts from the hands of slave owners?
Why would it be wrong to return them in more enlightened times?
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Stop talking about a ‘loan.’ We all know they wouldn’t be coming back.
The Marbles are now part of British history. They weren’t stolen, and we have nothing to gain by returning them to Greece. Apart from that, they are not so outstanding to be essential to Greek pride that they should cause any real suffering to their civilisation. As part of European artistry, they have always been available for viewing by people of all nations, without cost. They must not be given away to please modern whims and unjustified imaginary guilt.
The whole point of the article is to make a cultural case beyond ‘modern whims and unjustified imaginary guilt’
My point is that the article does not succeed in its intent.
Indeed, the nub of the argument for what it is worth is here: “The Parthenon marbles belong to all humanity. It is on that basis that the Parthenon Marbles should be reunited,”
If they belong to all humanity than they are as well off in London as Athens since they will not be reunited but stuck in another Museum away from the remains of the Temple. Will they be seen by more in London or Athens?
Of course if the Greeks want to buy them back and leave us with decent copies then we should be open to negotiations.
Eligin bought the marbles so perhaps they can be sold back? That will be around £6 million pounds please. Surely a bargain?
…I’m afraid my experience of Greek Museums is that they are potentially very good. But mostly shut, “under repair” or otherwise impossible to visit…and on the odd occasions you find one open…many rooms will be shut “for re-arrangement”…and such staff as there are will be in the courtyard smoking, drinking coffee and treating interested visitors with obvious irritation…
Especially remote sites on smaller islands.
But TBF that does not apply to the Acropolis Museum, which is state of the art and well resourced by tourist dollars and euros.
Visiting the Parthenon was enough to convince me that the statues should be put back in situ. They would look fantastic. This would be an easy PR win for Britain.
But they won’t be back in situ. They will be in a museum (albeit a very good one) several hundred metres from the Parthenon.
And the justification for moving them at all is far for an open and shut case. It would also open a huge number of proverbial cans of worms for all museums, including the National Archaeological Museum in Athens which has a large number of items taken from their original locations.
Completely agree about the marbles being taken back to Greece.
But I don’t think it’s going to be a PR win for Britain, it’ll be an occasion for even more historical handwringing and, going from Mitsotakis’ previous conduct vis-à-vis the Sunak government, I don’t trust them to handle the situation either graciously or diplomatically.
My comment on the Unherd article 18 months ago by Varoufakis still stands
“Where do you stop? These situations are always contested and arguable either way. Anyone who says ” there is no argument” is really saying they have just lost one. E.g. is the Greek government going to return much of the contents of the Archaeological Museum to the islands and other locations from where they were taken, many of which were not part of the Greek state until much later? If the Parthenon Marbles must be displayed near their original location, then logically the gold of Mycenae must be displayed on site there? You can reduce ad absurdum the contents of all museums.”
In situ would mean 40 foot up behind the exterior entablature, completely obscured from view.
I happen to agree.
You agree that (as Simon Blanchard) said “they would look fantastic” if (as you say) they would be “completely obscured from view”?
Am I right to infer that you think that rendering them invisible would be an improvement? (Genuine question)
Invisible to those they were never meant to be seen by, yes.
It would make a lot of people in our mass democratic, image-saturated and profane consumer-culture realise how uterly strange and anachronisitic our entire modern concept of ‘heritage’ really is.
The same with the Benin Bronzes. Many of them were only meant to be seen by certain eyes at certain times.
Far from ‘belonging to all humanity’ as he writer above whiggishly suggests, these objects were local, spatially numinous, often dangerous and spiritually potent fetish objects with an arcane and sacred function we can only guess at.
The idea of them ‘formulated on a pin’ in some air conditioned museum, wih little labels telling you what to make of them, should fill one with dread – wherever it may be.
3d scan them, and make a copy to keep here, agree with Greece to 3d scan what they have, as part of the return agreement, have a copy of the complete freeze in the British museum. In fact you could make multiple copies if you were so inclined
What an excellent solution!
I want Winnie the Pooh restored to Britain!
Was the Pathenon mosque being used to store munitions by the Muslims…just like today in Gaza? Isn’t that how much of it was ruined? Well, the Brits I learn GIFTED “historic Palesitne” aka Brigadoon to the JEWS….especially the WHITE EUrOPEAN KHZAR Jews , just handed it back to us with bows and a lot of good for you mates ….so Brits Give back the Elgin Marbles to Greece. Melena Mercouri fought for this…honor her memory.
I have come to agree with Marinetti that the museums need to be closed altogether now. The Pharisees have had the gospel of history in captivity for too long.
The Elgin Marbles should undoubtedly go back but on the understanding they must either be remounted in their original place – 40 foot up behind the exterior entablature – or repurposed as a sumptuous Archepiscopal Throne for the Archbishop of Athens.
How delighted I was in another context, after ‘all that faff’ to see that Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has promised to hand the ceremonial Bronzes of Benin straight back to the 40th hereditary Oba of Benin as soon as they are landed at Lagos Island after being ‘returned’ from the British Museum.
How the credentialled professoriate howled when they suddenly realised that those ‘cultural artefacts’ as they ‘dead-name’ them, were to possibly escape the embalming clutches of the global academic class who have the same attitude to history as the Victorian ornithologist had to bird-life. They think that to kill it, frame it and re-represent it is to preserve it, somehow.
The only better place for them would be the officers mess of the Royal Marines but one needn’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.
I felt the same thrill, perverse though it may be, when I heard about the reconsecration of the Grand Mosque in Istanbul (where the Imam has returned to preaching leaning on a drawn scimitar) and The Sengol (Holy Sceptre of the Hindu Kings) being taken from an Allahbad Museum and brought into ceremonial re-use by President Modi in India.
Meanwhile this country continues its journey into bewildered estrangement from its own history by permitting the removal of the the Stone of Destiny from beneath St Edward’s Throne and carting it off to be gazed at and ‘contextualised’ by curators in a provincial museum in “Perth And Kinross”
The Stone of Scone has gone back to as close as practacably possible to where it was stolen from. And quite right too
I agree entirely with the sentiment you express.
But ask yourself, what was really impracticable about returning it to the site of the Moot Hill Chapel on the site of the old High Altar in the ruins of Scone Abbey? Where Charles II was crowned in 1651 while his ancestry, drawn back to the reign King Fergus, was solemnly recited by James Balfour, Lyon King of Arms.
Or even, failing that, to Scone Palace where Bonnie Prince Charlie rested in 1745? or even Edinburgh Castle historic seat of the Scottish Crown?
The answer? Perth City Council had a redundant City Hall they were converting into a visitor attraction and so that ancient, numinous, living piece of history has been imprisoned in a glass case at the new Perth Museum where it can now be contextualised out of if existence for us by tenured academics.
I don’t disagree with you that ideally it would have been returned to the site of the high altar, but given the stone’s recent propensity to go walkabout, and that Lord Mansfield probably would not see it totally as a trouble free guest, then the present site is a sensible solution.
I’m a british museum member because I’m a archeology/history fan but I agree this particular item would be better seen in Athens.
I would welcome the return. Melinda Mercouri whilst Culture minister indicated their return would be rewarded by the eternal love of the Greek people. more than a fair price.
The Greeks have had the hump with Britain since we “discouraged” them from having a Communist government after WW2.
Yes I don’t think Greece has many statutes of Churchill to offer in return.