It’s an ancient story, still relevant to the modern day.
For more than two centuries, the British Museum in London and the Acropolis Museum in Athens have been fighting over ancient marbles that once adorned the Parthenon in Greece.
It’s an issue that can get heated, admitted British Museum spokesperson Hannah Boulton.
About half of the marbles are in the British Museum and half remain in Athens. Fragments are also in the Louvre and other museums in Europe.
The 2,500-year-old sculptures depict Greek gods, like the head of the horse that drew the chariot of the Greek moon goddess, Serene. The frieze shows the people of Athens in religious procession. Some carved panels show centaurs, who were half man, half horse.
Origins of the Dispute
In the early 1800s, the Scottish nobleman Lord Elgin removed half of the marbles from the Parthenon in Athens, when the city was ruled by Turkey. Elgin, who was the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, took them back to the UK.
The British Parliament found them to be legally acquired in 1816, bought the marbles from Lord Elgin, and presented them to the British Museum.
The museum stands by Parliament’s decision today, saying that Lord Elgin had permission to remove the marbles.
“This debate isn’t new. Very soon after Elgin had taken the sculptures, there were calls for them to be returned,” said Boulton.
“It was entirely legal by the standards of the day,” she added.
Greece wants the marbles back in Athens. So does the British Committee for the reunification of the Parthenon marbles.
The vice-chair of the committee notes there is a lack of documentation.
“Did he [Elgin] seek and was he given permission to really seriously dismantle the Parthenon? That is what we will never know I suspect,” said Paul Cartledge, Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge.
“I personally think it’s a fruitless, legalistic argument. I’m much more interested in why the British government thought it was correct for them to buy the marbles that Elgin brought back to London,” he said.
“Why did they think that was okay and confer trusteeship on the British Museum? That seems to more more like the act of an imperial power rather than a custodian of a universally admired and loved artwork.”
The Greek Prime Minister’s Appeal
The Greek Embassy in London said that the Greek prime minister made an appeal to “to reunite the Parthenon marbles that were brutally removed from the monument in Athens.”
The country hopes to reunite the marbles in Athens in 2021, to mark 200 years of Greek independence.
“This appeal is addressed to all parts involved, as well as Britain, where the majority of the sculptures were transported,” a spokesperson from the Greek Embassy wrote in an email.
In 2015, the Greek government commissioned a team of international lawyers to advise them on the return of the marbles.
Among them was Amal Clooney and Geoffrey Robertson.
“Elgin was a thief,” said Robertson.
“In Athens there is a wonderful new museum, itself an architectural wonder, which is waiting with the half that Elgin left, the half of the marbles to be reunited with the rest of the marbles,” he said.
The UK government’s Department for Culture, Media, and Sport said in a statement that the decision lies in the hands of the British Museum.
“Museums operate without political interference. Decisions relating to exchanges and partnerships with other institutions are taken by the executive and trustees of the museum,” a spokesperson wrote in an email.
Boulton said the British Museum would be open to loans of the marbles.
“We’d be happy obviously to have conversations about loans and about lending, not just to Athens but to other places,” she said.
The row has been raging for over two centuries—and it looks like it’ll continue in the years ahead.
Reporting by Jane Werrell in London.
