The Parthenon Marbles: What they are and why Britain MUST return them
An explainer for those unsure about the issues involved
One of the more common topics that I draw upon on Classical Studies Memes for Hellenistic Teens is the contents of the British Museum - in particular, the collected sculptures from the Parthenon known to many as the Elgin Marbles. If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’ll know that I have a very firm stance on their return - that is not only morally right but that it is a must. Today I thought I would give those of you unfamiliar with the history and legal issues behind this a basic run down to understand the (not-so) complex situation.
What are the Parthenon/Elgin Marbles?
The word ‘marble’s is probably misleading - are you thinking of those colourful round balls that kids used to play with? In fact they are a series of sculptures and decorative friezes (panels) carved out of marble that once adorned the famous Parthenon in Athens. The Parthenon, built over 2,500 years ago was a Temple to the Virgin Athena (Athena Parthenos) situated high on the Acropolis overlooking the city. And there it sat for over 2000 years, before being badly damaged in an explosion - who knew that storing ammunition in a monument was a bad idea? - in 1687. Over a hundred years later, however, greater damage would be done to the building at the behest of one man.
The Parthenon was of course beautifully decorated with an elaborate series of panels - 92 individual metopes on the outside formed snippets of stories, while at each end the triangular pediment fitted its own unique story. Inside, a hidden frieze depicted the famous Panathenaic procession in one continuous band. All of which was decorated with colour, precious metals and stones. The quality of the artistry was unmatched for its time, and the size of the building itself was testament to the ambition of the Athenian Empire at its height in the mid-5th Century BC. It was this decoration that attracted the attention of Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin, a Scottish-born noble with a typically British attitude to Greece.
Elgin was appointed as British ambassador to the Sultan of Turkey in 1798 - the Ottoman Empire at the time controlled much of modern-day Greece. Before even leaving, he set about planning to make casts and sketches of the temple at Athens. Despite the Government being disinterested, he made his own preparations, employing Neapolitan court painter Giovani Lusieri to assist him. Now being an ambassador, Elgin set out to make sure he had permission to do so, and according to him, obtained a firman, a type of decree from the Ottomans, in 1801 - although he curiously reapplied in 1810, and no record of the original was ever found. The latter exists only in the form of a translation into Italian. Whatever the case, Elgin began to do more than he had suggested - he began to cut away and remove sections of decoration from the actual temple itself, to take back home with him.
Between 1801 and 1812, huge amounts of the original decoration were stripped, chiseled or broken off the temple and shipped back to Britain. Elgin planned to keep them in a private museum for his own benefit, but his plans supposedly changed due to a costly divorce. After a failed previous attempt, he managed to convince the British Museum to buy the sculptures off him for £35,000 (half the cost it had taken to extract them) and their ownership was transferred by a literal Act of Parliament. From that time they have been owned and housed within the British Museum, and left entirely at their mercy. The British Museum continues to maintain that they are the legal (and thus rightful) owners of the pieces and keep them there for their protection.
The Debate
As you can imagine, people in Greece were not and are not happy about the removal of these timeless sculptures from their most famous work of architecture. Since even the time of their removal, there have been vocal opponents of the move both within Greece and Britain - none perhaps more famous than Lord Byron, who wrote a his own mournful epitaph upon seeing the sculptures torn from their home. While the history is long and convoluted, the situation today is more relevant - because what side people take says a lot about their ideals and privileges. It’s worth noting that a young Boris Johnson was adamant for their return as a student, but when in power as Prime Minister would not particularly entertain the topic. You will also see the argument spill over online on many occasions, and I have prepared below a handy guide to the sorts of arguments you might see, and why they are wrong.
Argument 1: They were taken legally
We’ve already addressed above some of the legal arguments for the ownership of these carvings, though it must be acknowledged it is a complicated situation. First, Elgin purports to have received permission with a firman though no actual evidence exists besides a translation. Secondly, the text of the firman speaks mainly to the making of casts and sketches, with a fleeting mention of removing “any pieces of stone with old inscriptions, and figures” towards the end. It would take quite a generous reading of this to suggest that Elgin had carte blanche to cut away whatever he liked from the building. Third, though the Ottomans claimed control over Athens at the time, the legality of their actions as an occupying force cannot be set in stone - anyone who has studied jurisprudence will understand that just because someone made something legal at the time, it does not mean it always will be. These things combine to give a very shaky legal ground already - but the point is that it should not really matter anyway, because they can and should be legally returned. There is no strong moral argument arising from having a piece of paper saying you can steal stuff.
Argument 2: Ok even if they weren’t exactly taken legally, finders keepers etc
A classic of the Rule Britannia crowd who leap to the defence of the BM whenever the marbles are mentioned, the ‘finders keepers’ remarks stink of the lazy justifications of the horrors of colonialism that still creep around today. The usual argument is that items taken in war or conquest belong to the ‘winners’ blah blah blah. Except of course that doesn’t really apply here - because at best, they were bought in a shoddy deal by some guy who bribed his way into sneaking them home before the world realised. Doesn’t really reflect the usual conquest argument. Furthermore, it’s not like he was the only person to do this - the early history of archaeology was glorified grave robbing and it’s not something to look upon with a great deal of admiration. Notice how the British treated Richard III when they found him under a carpark - imagine the uproar if an American company had found it first and whisked it back to LA to put up in Planet Hollywood? My final point to the ‘finders keepers’ crowd is to say, grow up, you’re not five any more.
Argument 3: Well we’re keeping them safe
I love when they bring this one up because it’s like stepping into a minefield with magnetic boots. The idea that moving these sculpture halfway around the world has kept the safe is funny for a number of reasons. First, the physical act of removing the statues already caused a significant amount of damage both to the structure and the carvings. It should nearly go without saying that they were not Lego blocks meant to be stuck on and removed - these were huge bits of rock all designed to be part of the whole. The rough techniques used to extract them caused a great deal of damage to the work. Not only that, but one of the ships transporting them actually sunk and it took two years to recover them - hardly a safe venture! Second, the British Museum has a frankly terrible track record of looking after them. Not only have they been damaged by graffiti, pollution, rain, vandalism and even a skylight falling on them, they have even famously been damaged by their own staff. On multiple occasions attempts to ‘clean’ the sculptures actually resulted in them being damaged. Workers who assumed that they should be ‘pure white’ (awkward) did significant damage scrubbing away surface traces and chisel marks, not realising that the Pentalic marble it is made of has a natural tinge. Third, London has quite famously been the scene of a number of terrorist attacks and bombing, none more so than during the London blitz. 6 bombs fell on the museum during this time, destroying 250,000 books though fortunately not these artefacts. But it does beg the question as to why people would assume that London was any safer than anywhere else. More on that later.
Argument 4: They would have been destroyed if left behind
Oh to live in the fantasy world some people inhabit. This one is an easy one because Elgin did not actually manage to ‘seize’ all the sculptures, and many fragments still remain in Athens. In fact, it is now housed within the state of the art Acropolis Museum, which allows you to see them safely in a recreated space, with the actual building just out the window. They even have casts in the space of the real things, which I’m sure they’ll happily give to the BM so they can keep their galleries open. Studies have even shown that the sculptures left in Athens have much better evidence of original details like chisel marks due to their not being given to the British Museum… For a long time, the site in Athens was not particularly flash and the old museum was not amazing, so many will point to this as ‘proof’ that they didn’t… deserve them? But this conveniently ignores that fact that these sculptures are the attraction that would fund their preservation - they didn’t get a flash museum because they weren’t there. We can’t even begin to speculate how much grander their preservation might have been if not for this 200 year sundering. Some are quick to point out the economic issues the Greek economy has faced lately (if only they had a tourism boost huh?) but those same commenters have been very silent while the UK stumbles from one calamity to the next in the wake of Brexit. People also, randomly, point to completely different countries where relics and buildings left behind have been destroyed by iconoclastic regimes, such as ISIS in the Middle East. These arguments, however, very expertly avoid discussing just why such regimes exist in those countries and the hundreds of years of political and social disruption that colonial states like Britain caused around the globe. If you don’t know how ISIS started, perhaps Messrs. Bush and Blair could be worth chatting to.
Argument 5: More people can see them in the UK
One of the funnier arguments about repatriation in general treats them like a capitalist product, which must attract as much attention and traffic volume as possible. While obviously the concept of opening up these treasures to the world is a noble one, there are of course many ways to do that without theft. After all, no one is getting far these days saying we should spread Jeff Bezos’ money around so that more people get to see it? But the central point is that, it’s really not about this because the argument is based in moral and ethic perspectives. Repatriated artefacts can be put back in the ground, housed in private collections or stored in a safe - provided that is the will of the people and place they belong to. There is no moral duty to ensure that the most eyes in the world land upon one thing. Furthermore, any figures used to compare traffic between the Athens and London museums cannot account for how this would change if they were moved. If they did change, then it would show that Athens is simply being denied the opportunity. If British Museum numbers stayed constant, it would show that people would turn up anyway so why hold on to them?? The argument that putting them in Britain opens them up to more of the world is also dubious, given that the majority of foreign cultures represented there are from ones they formerly colonised and stole stuff from too… It’s really just about making it easier for British people to see them.
Argument 6: The Slippery Slope
A classic tactic in any losing argument is to wildly gesticulate and shout, what’s next? Cats marrying dogs - oops wrong bad argument. In the debate over the Parthenon Marbles, it is often stated negatively that if they ‘had to’ return these, then where would it end - all of the great museums in the world would be empty! Firstly, lmao that’s not a good sign. Maybe try legally acquiring things. Secondly, this is hardly the start of some gold rush of repatriations. The fact that this has taken more than 2 centuries of committed, public, global campaigning with little result shows that it’s not likely to lead to a sudden rush. Does it set a precedent? Maybe in another 200 years! Third, this is a very specific and obvious case which is not normally true of most museum items. These have a clear universal home and location, a fit for purpose venue and everything else ready and waiting to receive them. The vast majority of items in museum of foreign origin do not have such specific claims laid on them. Finally, museums have actually been repatriating stuff for some time though not such high profile items. These have been carefully done, such as the Smithsonian returning the remains of 54 indigenous Māori people to Aotearoa - again, a clear case with a specific home and a moral incentive, but even that took far too long to happen. So my question is - if you really think this is a slippery slope, why would that be bad?
Argument 7: They are part of British heritage now
Look I can’t deny that if you renamed it the British Museum of Colonial Plundering, you’d probably have a stronger case for retaining them. But as I have hinted before, the true legacy of the capture and display of such items is one of a very troubled set of principles - that saw the world as Britain’s to colonise, loot and display as curios in glass cabinets. And along with that came a lot of ideas ethnic and cultural supremacy, which seem very out of place in today’s Britain. It’s hard to be part of the discipline of Classics and not be confronted by just how much the British and their friends have treated the ancient world as their own property to deal with as they please, and the disdain they show for the actual modern inhabitants of these places, perhaps none more so than Egypt. I think it is high time that some serious cultural reflection takes place on what these institutions actually stand for and whether they should really fly those flags so proudly.
Additional Arguments
It’s too legally complicated now - this one is a neat little contrivance, a legal loophole to sneak out of it. Essentially the BM will say they can’t return the Marbles because of a law the government passed. And when the Parliament is asked, they say it is not a political decision and it’s up to the BM to decide. A perfect little Catch 22 that benefits both parties perfectly. Of course, the façade vanishes if they both grow up and just get on with it. Not that there is much chance of that.
Why don’t you ever talk about other things - God I would love to talk about the repatriation of other items. But this one seems like such an obvious place to start that it seems like, if we can’t get this done, nothing good can ever be achieved. Yes, let’s be critical of a lot of other museums (looking at you France, US…) but that doesn’t refute any of the arguments above.
Britain should get to make their own decisions - And what a great recent track record they have! Despite the complete lack of faith I have in the British public since Brexit, it’s important to note that every public poll has showed overwhelming support for their return - very few support keeping them, and many more have no idea what they are. Just let them go.
I’ll happily update this to address any additional strains of rubbish people fire at me in response, but for now I feel like I’ve covered the topic extensively. The British Museum is worried about the effect of them losing these artefacts - but surely, in this day and age, an act of magnanimity on this scale would only improve their reputation, while also doing a tremendous good for all those who truly love the ancient world.
It’s time. Let’s do this.