Elgin marbles

 

(ĕl'gĭn) , ancient sculptures taken from Athens to England in 1806 by Thomas Bruce, 7th earl of Elgin; other fragments exist in several European museums. Consisting of much of the surviving frieze and other sculptures from the Parthenon, a caryatid, and a column from the Erechtheum, they were sold to the British government in 1816 and are now on view in the British Museum. Since then, the Greek government has demanded the return of the marbles. Although British claims are based on Elgin's purchase of the sculptures, Greece has contested this, and its position has many supporters.

Bibliography

See T. Vrettos, The Elgin Affair (1997).

The Elgin Marbles (IPA: /'ɛl gən/), also called the Parthenon Marbles, are a collection of marble sculptures that originally decorated the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens. Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803, obtained permission from the Ottoman authorities to remove sculptures from the Acropolis. From 1801 to 1812 Elgin's agents removed about half of the surviving sculptures of the Parthenon. The Marbles were transported to Britain, and were purchased by the British Government in 1816 after public debate in Parliament. They were placed on display in the British Museum, where they are now on view in the purpose-built Duveen Gallery.

The Marbles include 247 feet of the Parthenon Frieze (from an original 524 feet), 15 metopes (from an original 92) taken from the series on the south side of the Parthenon depicting battles of Lapiths and Centuars, and 17 figures from the east and west pediments. In addition, the collection contains a Caryatid from the Erechtheion, four slabs from the frieze of the Temple of Athena Nike, and architectural fragments of the Parthenon, Propylaia, Erechtheion, and the Temple of Athena Nike.

Description

Main articles: Parthenon Frieze and Metopes of the Parthenon

The Elgin Marbles include some of the statuary from the pediments, the metope panels depicting battles between the Lapiths and the Centaurs, as well as the Parthenon Frieze which decorated the horizontal course set above the interior architrave of the temple. As such, they represent more than half of what now remains of the surviving sculptural decoration of the Parthenon: the Elgin marbles and frieze extend to about 1km when laid out flat, 15 out of 92 metopes; 17 partial figures from the pediments, as well as other pieces of architecture. Elgin's acquisitions also included objects from other buildings on the Athenian Acropolis: the Erechtheion, reduced to ruin during the Greek War of Independence (1821–33); the Propylaia; and the Temple of Athena Nike. Lord Elgin took half of the marbles from the Parthenon and wax casts were produced from the remaining ones.

Legality of the removal of the sculptures

Despite the firman mentioned above, the notion that Ottoman authorities granted Elgin legal title to the Parthenon sculptures, which has been the main British argument for keeping them, was recently challenged in a detailed study by Professor David Rudenstine of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, in the International Journal of Cultural Property. Rudenstine concludes that the premise that Elgin obtained legal title to the marbles, which he then transferred to the British government, "is certainly not established and may well be false." ^{[1] [2]}

Criticism by Elgin's contemporaries

When the marbles were shipped to Britain, there was criticism of Elgin (who had spent a fortune on the project) but also much admiration of the sculptures. Lord Byron strongly objected to their removal from Greece:

Dull is the eye that will not weep to see

Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed

By British hands, which it had best behoved

To guard those relics ne’er to be restored.

Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,

And once again thy hapless bosom gored,

And snatch'd thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred!

—"Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"

Byron was not the only Englishman to protest the removal at the time:

"The Honourable Lord has taken advantage of the most unjustifiable means and has committed the most flagrant pillages. It was, it seems, fatal that a representative of our country loot those objects that the Turks and other barbarians had considered sacred,"

said Sir John Newport.

A contemporary MP Thomas Hughes, an eye witness, later wrote:

"The abduction of small parts of the Parthenon, of a value relatively small but which previously contributed to the solidity of the building, left that glorious edifice exposed to premature ruin and degradation. The abduction dislodged from their original positions, wherefrom they precisely drew their interest and beauty, many pieces which are altogether unnecessary to the country that now owns them."

John Keats was one of those who saw them privately exhibited in London, hence his two sonnets about the marbles. Some scholars, notably Richard Payne Knight, insisted that the marbles dated from the period of the Roman Empire, but most accepted that they were authentic works from the studio of Phidias, the most famous ancient Greek sculptor. They were eventually purchased by Parliament for the nation in 1816 for £35,000 and deposited in the British Museum, where they were displayed in the Elgin Saloon (constructed in 1832), until the Duveen Gallery was completed in 1939.

Damage to the Marbles

Some of the Marbles were damaged prior to Lord Elgin obtaining them. One example is that imparted during the period the Parthenon served as a Byzantine church and later as a Latin cathedral (ca. A.D. 600–1458). During this period frescoes and Latin inscriptions were added to the marble walls and the parts of the statuary and other artwork considered pagan, particularly based on the associated taboo of viewing idols of God made in our image and the display of genitalia, and thus many such depictions were destroyed or removed^[3][4].

Another example of prior damage is that sustained during wars. In particular, an explosion ignited by Venetian bombardment in 1687, whilst the Parthenon was used as a munitions store during the Ottoman rule, destroyed or damaged many pieces of Parthenon art including some of those later taken by Lord Elgin ^[5]. In particular this explosion sent the marble roof, most of the cella walls, columns from the north and south peristyles and carved metopes and frieze blocks flying and crashing to the ground and thus destroying much of the artwork^[6]. Further damage was made to the art of the Parthenon by the Venetian general Francesco Morosini when he subsequently looted the site of its larger sculptures. His tackle was faulty and snapped, dropping an over life-sized Poseidon and the horses of Athena’s chariot from the west pediment to the rock of the Acropolis forty feet below.^[7]

The Erechtheum continued to serve as a munitions store during the Greek War of Independence ^[8] (1821-1833) which ended the >350 year Ottoman rule of Athens. During this time, the building received extensive damage from gun and canon fire, including the destruction of the North porch and damage to the marbles.^[9]

To facilitate transport by Elgin, the column capital of the Parthenon and many metopes and slabs were either hacked or sawn and sliced into smaller sections causing irreparable damage to the Parthenon itself to which these Marbles were connected. One shipload of marbles on board the British brig Mentor was caught in a storm off Cape Matapan and sank near Kythera, but was salvaged at the Earl's personal expense; it took two years to bring them to the surface.^[10]

Athens has one of the highest levels of pollution amongst European cites^[11]. Air pollution has caused substantial damage to Marble and stonework at the Parthenon, which, until recent cleaning, largely manifest as black crusts and coatings on carboniferous stones. ^[12]. On October 14th 2007, the first of the 4500 remaining Marbles at the Parthenon was removed to the new Parthenon Museum to protect them from further decay caused by the polluted atmosphere of Athens city. ^[13][14][15].

While the artifacts are held in London they have been saved from the hazards of pollution, neglect, and war, they have been irrevocably damaged by the unauthorized cleaning methods employed by British Museum staff in the 1930s^[16]. Acting under the erroneous belief that the marbles were originally bright white, under the orders of Joseph Duveen the marbles were cleaned with copper tools and caustics, altering the marbles' colouring. (The Pentelic marble, from which the sculptures are made, naturally acquires a tan colour similar to honey when exposed to air; this colouring is often known as the marble's "patina",^[17].) In addition, the process scraped away some of the detailed tone of many carvings ^[18]. The British Museum held an internal investigation and the officers responsible ceased museum employment.^{[citation needed]}. The British museum has responded with the statement that "the damage had been exaggerated for political reasons and that the Greeks were guilty of excessive cleaning of the marbles before they were brought to Britain" ^[19]. Nor should it be ignored that similar techniques were used by the Greeks during the 1950s to clean the Hephaestion Temple in Athens^[20][21].

According to a list of facts revealed by appeals to the UK Freedom of Information Act, the Elgin Marbles were damaged by two schoolboys fighting in the British Museum in 1961. One of the boys fell and knocked off part of a centaur's leg.^[22]

Natural disasters have also added to the deterioration of the Parthenon. In 1981, an earthquake caused substantial damage, particularly to the east facade ^[23]

Since 1975, Greece has been restoring the Acropolis. This restoration has included replacing the thousands of rusting iron clamps and supports that had previously been used with non-corrosive titanium rods^[24]; removing surviving artwork from the building into storage and subsequently a new museum built specifically for the display of the Parthenon art, which also involves replacing the artwork with high-quality replicas. This process has come under fire from some groups as some buildings have been completely dismantled, including the dismantling of the temple of Athena Nike and for the unsightly nature of the site due to cranes and scaffolding.^[25]. But the hope is to restore the site to some of its former glory, which may take another 20 years and 70 million Euros.^[26]

The Greek claim to the Marbles

The Greek government claims that the marbles should be returned to Athens on moral and artistic grounds, although it is no longer feasible or advisable to replace them on the Parthenon. The main stated aim of the Greek campaign is to reunite the Parthenon sculptures around the world in order to restore the unity of the monument.^[27] So far fragments of the monument have returned from Sweden,^[28] The University of Heidelberg, Germany,^[29] and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, USA.^[30] The New Acropolis Museum, designed by the Swiss-American architect Bernard Tschumi, is designed to hold the Parthenon sculptures arranged in the same way as they would have been on the Parthenon. It is intended to leave the spaces for the Elgin Marbles empty, rather than using casts in these positions, as a reminder to visitors of the fact that parts are held in other museums. The new museum plan also attracted other controversy; the construction site contains late Roman and early Christian archaeology, including an unusual seventh-century Byzantine bath house and other finds from Late Antiquity. A court challenge in Greece from the International Council on Museums and Sites (ICOMOS) to the site was rejected by the Greek civil courts in 2004. The new design incorporates the archaeological finds within the building.^[31]

The British Museum position

A range of slightly different points have been put by British Museum spokespersons over the years in defence of retention of the Elgin Marbles within the museum. The main points include:

• the maintenance of a single worldwide-oriented cultural collection, all viewable in one location, thereby serving as a world heritage centre and that fulfilling all restitution claims would empty most of the worlds great museums;
• the saving of the marbles from what would have been, or would be, pollution and other damage if relocated back to Athens;
• More than half the original marbles are lost and therefore return of the Elgin Marbles would not complete the collection in Greece; and
• a legal position that the museum is banned by charter from returning any part of its collection.^[32]

The latter was tested in the British High Court in May 2005 in relation to Nazi-looted Old Master artworks held at the museum; it was ruled that these could not be returned.^[33] The judge, Sir Andrew Morritt, ruled that the British Museum Act – which protects the collections for posterity – cannot be overridden by a "moral obligation" to return works known to have been plundered. It has been argued however, that connections between the legal ruling and the Elgin Marbles were more tenuous than implied by the Attorney General.^[34]

Another argument for maintaining their location within the UK has been made by J. H. Merryman, Sweitzer Professor of Law at Stanford University and co-operating professor in the Stanford Art Department. He argued that if the Parthenon were actually being restored, the would be a moral argument for returning the Marbles to the temple whence they came, and thus restoring its integrity. However, the Greek plan is to transfer them from a museum in London to one in Athens. They cannot be exposed to the Athenian smog. The sculptures which Elgin spared have now been taken down and put in the Acropolis Museum where the remaining caryatids from the Porch of the Maidens now peer at visitors from behind glass. "Is it more spiritually satisfying to see the Marbles in an Athenian museum gallery than one in London?" ^[35]

Public opinion polls

Despite the British Museum remaining in ardent refusal to return the marbles to Greece, a 1998 opinion poll, organised by Channel 4 TV, showed over 90% in favour of the return^[36]. It should be noted, however, that such an opinion poll is very likely to contain a very large bias as only those people with a strong point of view will participate and there are no restrictions on the number of times an individual may cast a vote. Indeed, in 1998, a non-biased poll carried out by MORI asking "If there were a referendum on whether or not the Elgin Marbles should be returned to Greece, how would you vote?" returned these values from the general adult population^[37]:

• 39% in favour of returning the marbles to Greece
• 15% in favour of keeping them at the British Museum
• 18% would not vote
• 28% had no opinion

A more recent opinion poll in 2002 (again carried out by MORI) showed similar results, with 40% in favour of returning the marbles to Greece, 16% in favour of keeping them within Britain and the remainder either having no opinion or would not vote ^[38]. When asked how they would vote if a number of conditions were met (including, but not limited to, a long-term loan where by the British maintained ownership and joint control over maintenance) the number responding in favour of return increased to 56% and those in favour or keeping them dropped to 7%.

Both MORI poll results have been characterised by proponents of the return of the Marbles to Greece as representing a groundswell of public opinion supporting return, since the proportion explicitly supporting return to Greece significantly exceeds the number who are explicitly in favour of keeping the Marbles at the British Museum^[39][40]. These observations, however, ignore the large proportion of the population that did not offer an opinion.^{[citation needed]}

Other displaced Parthenon art

The remainder of the surviving sculptures that are not in museums or storerooms in Athens are held in museums in various locations across Europe. The British Museum also holds additional fragments from the Parthenon sculptures acquired from various collections that have no connection with Lord Elgin.

The collection held in the British Museum includes the following material from the Acropolis:

• Parthenon: 247ft of the original 524ft of frieze

• 15 of the 92 metopes
• 17 pedimental figures; various pieces of architecture

• Erechtheion: a Caryatid, a column and other architectural members
• Propylaia: Architectural members
• Temple of Athena Nike: 4 slabs of the frieze and architectural members

Further reading

• Mary Beard, The Parthenon (Profile Books, 2004) ISBN 978-1861973016
• Marc Fehlmann, "Casts and Connoisseurs. The Early Reception of the Elgin Marbles" (Apollo, June 2007, pp. 44-51)^[41]
• Christopher Hitchens, Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles (with essays by Robert Browning and Graham Binns) (Verso, March 1998)
• Ian Jenkins, The Parthenon Frieze (British Museum Press, 2002)
• Dorothy King, The Elgin Marbles (Hutchinson, January 2006)
• William St. Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles (Oxford University Press, 1998)

References

External links

• The British Museum Parthenon pages

Campaigning websites

• The Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles
• Acropolis of Athens — AcropolisofAthens.gr — one monument, one heritage
• British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles' site
• Marbles Reunited: Friends of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles
• The International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures
• Elginism — Collection of news articles relating to the Elgin Marbles
• An interpretation of the meaning of the Marbles
• A guide to the case for the restitution of the Parthenon Marbles
• Gillen Wood, "The strange case of Lord Elgin's nose": the cultural context of the early 19th century debate over the marbles, the politics and the esthetics, imperialism and hellenism
• Information about arguments for the marbles to be returned to Greece
• Marbles with an Attitude — a different approach to the cause of reuniting the Parthenon Marbles
• BBC News -- Swede gives back Acropolis marble
• BBC News -- Greek school children demand for the return of Elgin Marbles
• An argument for keeping the marbles at the British Museum
• A book by Dorothy King arguing for keeping the Marbles in the UK3d alt

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