US Congress lobbies for the return of the marbles of Parthenon to Greece.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Alexnm
I think the marbles should be returned. They belong to Greece.

And thanks Alexnm

[Winston]

This thread should be in the archives.

Now if we could somehow bring the Greek Royal family into this... They live in London, you know. Really close to the British Museum, I'm told.

[MarkG]

dino, since you're a man of law, you should follow the will of the US Congress

[DinoDoc]

MarkG: The US Congress has no jurisdiction to pass laws in this matter. Only to pass meaningless sense of the Senate resolutions.

[The Pioneer]

Originally posted by paiktis22
If you're lucky you could even play for Panathinaikos - but I doubt it 'cause only elite play for that team )

[Alex]

No, Dino, you did not understand. I meant that the marbles belong to Greece. To return them is a matter of respect.

[The Pioneer]

I agree with you Alex but it's not only a matter of respect. There has been enough looting and stealing in Greece and as a result you will see a lot of the Greek artifacts in museums around the world. If it was a matter of respect then they should all be returned to Greece. The marbles in question were actually STOLEN and SMUGGLED out of the country and that makes a difference.

[Alex]

Originally posted by The Pioneer
I agree with you Alex but it's not only a matter of respect. There has been enough looting and stealing in Greece and as a result you will see a lot of the Greek artifacts in museums around the world. If it was a matter of respect then they should all be returned to Greece. The marbles in question were actually STOLEN and SMUGGLED out of the country and that makes a difference.

Hm. I'm not so sure I understand what you mean.

[Bereta_Eder]

Alex, pretty much what he says. The marbles of Parthenon were stolen and smuggled out of Greece.

Here:

Crucially, however, nobody troubled to ask the Greeks, then under Turkish dominion, about taking 17 figures from the Parthenon pediment, as well as 15 metopes, 56 slabs of friezes, a Caryatid column, 13 marble heads and a miscellany of fragments. An appalled witness was Lord Byron, who wrote abundantly in protest, bearing down on Elgin's Scottish roots, as in "The Curse of Minerva":

Daughter of Jove! In Britain's injured name,
A true-born Briton may the deed disclaim.
Frown not on England; England owns him not:
Athena, no! thy plunderer was a Scot.

Apparently Lord Byron had something to say as well


Pioneer,

hmmm, let's see... you have said that Thessaloniki is the most beautiful city in the world... you are not a fan of Panathinaikos.... could you be Aris or PAOK?

[The Pioneer]

Greek artifacts can be found displayed anywhere in the world most of them legally, on loan, etc. But these marbles were actually stolen by the English during the Turkish Occupation of Greece and llegally placed in their museum. This AFAIK one of the reasons why this matter has been argued for the longest time.

I hope that I expressed myself better in this post but posting from work is not always easy .

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Winston
Now if we could somehow bring the Greek Royal family into this... They live in London, you know. Really close to the British Museum, I'm told.

Winston, them they can keep. It's a gift.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Alexnm
No, Dino, you did not understand. I meant that the marbles belong to Greece. To return them is a matter of respect.

I agree that it is a matter of respect. Although not only of that.

To their honour, most Brits want the marbles to be returned to Greece.

The British Museum is scared that the return of the marbles of Parthenon to Greece will open up Pandora's Box and will make everyone demand back their own heritage.

The British do not have enough of their own to fill their own museum, see.

It is a matter of politics. Still, I'm confident that the marbles of Parthenon will return. British Museum or not, it matters little.

[Bereta_Eder]

As for Dinodoc, speaking about laws. Even the "law" of the Turks to Elgin is not valid.

These are the Greek treasures that were violently torn from the temple's frieze by employees of Lord Elgin the year 1802 when Greece was under Turkish occupation. The history of how these marbles finally were placed in the British Museum is long and painful. Suffice to say here briefly how they got there.

Lord Elgin was the first ever British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. He was more than welcomed. Turkey had declared war on Napoleon's France and Great Britain was therefore a useful ally. His influence at the sublime Porte was beyond question. He also endeared himself to Turkish authorities in Athens by often making them costly gifts.


At that time Lord Elgin was planning the decoration of his stately home in Scotland. He was advised that there were nothing more beautiful than the sculptures of the Greek Parthenon. He engaged a crew to make copies and moldings of these sculptures to make his house beautiful. But once in Constantinople his appetite became voracious. Why only copies and moldings? Why not the original sculptures? How to obtain them?


There was no concern for what the Greek under Turkish domination felt about the plundering of it's most precious creations. Elgin had influence enough "and promises of solid proofs of friendship" to obtain from the Turkish vizier, limited and conditioned as it was, a permit, called a firman. This is what it said; "That the artists meet no opposition in walking, viewing, contemplating the pictures and buildings they may wish to copy; or in modeling with chalk of gypsum the said ornaments and visible figures; or in excavating when they find it necessary in search of inscriptions among the rubbish; or when they wish to take away some pieces of stone with o1d inscriptions or figures there on, that no opposition be made to them to particularly as there is no harm in the said buildings being thus viewed, contemplated and drawn".


The imperative question is, can this document, by any measure of veracity be interpreted as permission to use giant saws to tear from the temple (and causing terrible damage to the edifice) half of the sculptures from the temple frieze. Greeks say no. Archaeologists and historians. British among them, say no. By an overwhelming vote UNESCO says no. 269 members of the European Parliament sent a petition saying no. The British Labor party says no and astonishingly Lord Elgin said no.


This from Elgin letters; "It was no part of my original plan to bring away anything but models" and this from another Elgin letter; "The Turkish government denied that the persons who had sold these marbles to me had any right to dispose of them". Today more and more of the English people galvanized by the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles are urging the return. The British Labor Party is on record, now newly confirmed, that should they be voted to power they will promote the return. There is reason for great optimism. Melina Mercouri Foundation are effectively seeking support for the realization of the New Acropolis Museum in which space wil1 be reserved for the great day when the Parthenon marbles come back home.


Melina said; "I hope that I will see the Marbles back in Athens before I die; but if they come back later I shall be reborn".


Jules Dassin

As far as ethics are concerned the answer is again, no.

[Chris 62]

The Limeys will never do it, if they do, then Europe's musems will be wide open to millions of claims for all the stuff they looted over the centuries.

[Bereta_Eder]

As far as what Acropolis means to the Greeks

The year is 1821. Greeks are fighting for their independence. In Athens, they besiege the Acropolis, a stronghold of the Turkish occupiers. As the siege grinds on, the Turks' ammunition runs short. They begin to dismantle sections of the Parthenon, prying out the 2,300-year-old lead clamps and melting them down for bullets. The Greek fighters, horrified at this defacement of their patrimony, send the Turks a supply of bullets. Better to arm their foes, they decide, than to let the ancient temple come to harm.


It is an extraordinary and unexampled gesture of self-sacrifice. But then, the Parthenon is an extraordinary and unexampled masterpiece of Western culture. Built in the 5th century BC as a shrine to Athena, goddess of war and patron of Athens, it is the acme of classical Greek architecture and sculpture, the greatest monument of the Age of Pericles. There is no more storied building in all of Europe. No Greek could see it vandalized and fail to protest.







Barbarous indeed. Elgin's assault on the Parthenon was driven not by a desire to preserve great art but by greed: He originally intended the marbles to decorate his estate in Scotland. His men used hacksaws to chop dozens of metopes and sculptures from the edifice they had adorned for 23 centuries. For close to two centuries Elgin's booty has been locked in a London museum; for nearly all that time, conscientious Britons have lamented his theft. Lord Byron, a passionate philhellene, raged against Elgin. The ambassador's crime, he fumed in ''Childe Harold,'' was


To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spar'd:


Cold as the crags upon his native coast,


His mind as barren and his heart as hard,


Is he whose head conceiv'd, whose hand prepar'd,


Aught to displace Athena's poor remains.