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The Parthenon Marbles are a set of marble sculptures created by the Greek sculptor Phidias and his assistants sometime between 447 and 432 BC

…And they’re at centre of a nearly 200 year dispute between Greece and the United Kingdom.

So, what’s it all about? Well…

Essentially, the Parthenon Marbles currently reside in The British Museum, in London

And the Greeks would like them back.

What this really comes down to though is — how we define ownership —

Or, as Barbara Krueger puts it, Who Owns What?

As with anything, it’s partly a question of context.

To really understand what’s happening here, we need first to look at the building itself.

The Parthenon is a massive doric temple dedicated to Athena — the Greek goddess of wisdom — and was designed to symbolize strength, power, intelligence, and harmony.

It was built at the centre of the famous Athenian acropolis, and is done entirely in marble quarried from nearby Mount Pentelicus

…And, as a testament to Greek identity, it has no equal.

Like many ancient Greek temples, it tells a story — that of greek heroism. Inscribed along the metopes we see battles depicting Greek civilization and ethos triumphing over a barbaric other (figured here in the form of Centaurs, Amazons, Giants, or Trojans). In other words, they’re deeply, intimately, about what it means to be Greek.

So, how did fragments of this sculpture get to the UK?

At the turn of the 19th century, Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, served as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

At this time, the Turks had occupied Greece

…And the Parthenon was in a bit of a state.

Over the years it had been converted into…

A church

A mosque,

And an ammunitions depot.

It’d sustained extensive structural damage, and had been picked apart by looters.

When Lord Elgin arrived in Athens, he recognized the profound artistic and cultural significance of the building, and hired artists and sculptors to make sketches and casts — intending to bring these back to Britain. Later, he felt compelled to remove pieces of the Parthenon as well — bit by bit — to bring them back, too.

In the end, he removed about 50% of the marbles.

Motivation is always a tricky thing to talk about, and Lord Elgin’s case is no exception. There are a few possibilities:

He may have been motivated by a sincere desire to foster greater cultural enlightenment and understanding;

There’s also an argument to be made for preservation: according to author William Hamilton, Elgin wanted to “rescue from oblivion, with the most accurate detail, whatever specimens of architecture and sculpture in Greece had still escaped the ravages of time, and the barbarism of the conquerors.”

Or, it could be a case of opportunistic archaeological looting. Lord Byron, Elgin’s contemporary, certainly takes this view — referring to Elgin as a “spoiler”and “plunderer” in his poem, “The Curse of Minerva” which was written in Athens.

We may never know for sure. But what we can say is that he did remove pieces of the Parthenon, and those pieces are still in England.

00:00 - Introduction
00:41 - The Parthenon
01:25 - Lord Elgin or The Elgin Affair
02:56 - Who Owns What?
04:17 - What the British say

#art #arthistory #sculpture

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Works Cited

Bauer, Amanda. “Archaeologies of the Greek Past.” Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the
Ancient World, Brown University. https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Jou...
Institute/courses/greekpast/4816.html.

Byron, Lord George Gordon. “The Curse of Minerva.” 17 March, 1811. (Unpublished) Hello
Poetry. hellopoetry.com/poem/4299/the-curse-of-minerva.

Hamilton, William, et al. Memorandum on the Subject of the Earl of Elgin’s Pursuits in Greece.
Printed for William Miller, 1811. Internet Archive.

Jordan, William. “British people tend to think Elgin Marbles should be returned.” YouGov. 18
October 2014. yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2014/10/18/british-people-
tend-want-elgin-marbles-returned.

Marshall, Alex. “As Europe Returns Artifacts, Britain Stays Silent.” The New York Times. 20
December 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/20/ar...
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“Parthenon.” History. 27 April 2021. Https://www.history.com/topics/ancien....

“Send them back: The Parthenon Marbles should be returned to Athens.” YouTube, uploaded
by Intelligence Squared, 22 June 2012,    • Send them back: The Parthenon Marbles shou...  .

“The Parthenon Sculptures.” The British Museum. https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/
british-museum-story/contested-objects-collection/parthenon-sculptures.

“Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_...
_Earl_of_Elgin.