No, but they were a powerful empire that took what they wanted from weak states.
It doesn’t sound like this was an act of the empire- but of an individual. One acting without the government approval or knowledge.
It’s not like the invading army took treasure- it’s more like some guy from Manhattan took an altar from a Cathedral in the Dominican Republic.
Nazi pilfered art is still getting returned- and that was an army.
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At this point, I don’t see why the legality of how they were originally acquired matters. They’re originally from Greece. Greece wants them back. Give them back. People will still go to the British Museum, honest.
I don’t care about the whole slippery slope argument that if they give those back, museums all over the world will have to re-evaluate their collections and whether they should return some of their artifacts to their original owners. Even if one thinks that’s a bad thing, they’ll still have the final choice of what to do with their collections, just as they do right now. At least resolve one of the most famous, hurtful, long-standing controversies to show that you have the slightest inkling of respect for other cultures and awareness of the negative consequences of museums’ ethnocentric history.
Plaster casts taught generations of art connoisseurs to abhor polychrome.
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Back when John Oliver was still a co-presenter of The Bugle podcast, he wonderfully described the British Museum as “the world’s oldest continuous active crime scene”.
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I in no way mean to imply support for either the ethical or legal propriety of Mr. Eglin’s work; but isn’t describing the marbles as “originally from Greece” in its own way potentially problematic RE: original owners, respect for other cultures; and ethnocentric history?
The Parthenon is originally Athenian, from the period when that meant a city-state with a fairly large de-facto empire(nominally a league of allies against Persian incursion; but just ask anyone who tried to leave the Delian League how that worked out for them…); and wouldn’t mean a nation-state for ~2 millennia, with a number of fairly influential polities between the fall of Athens as an independent power and the advent of Greece as a nation-state along roughly modern lines.
I’d agree that a British aristocrat with some tenuous authorization from the Ottoman administration that was soon to lose control of the area to local revolutionaries is a very, very, tepid candidate for legitimate ownership; but how do we chart ownership of the thing in a useful way without ascribing it to a variety of people who are less obviously foreign about it; but not necessarily more valid?
If, hypothetically, Elgin had an impeccably high quality authorization from the Ottomans would that have been legitimate?
If the Ottomans aren’t good enough, would the authorization of a western Roman emperor have been enough, or were they also just an imperial occupation? Would it be better once the western empire basically disintegrated and the remaining ‘Roman’ empire was pretty much the Hellenic eastern bit, and so, while technically a continuity government of the Roman empire much more culturally Greek?
Did the thread of legitimacy snap even further back; when Macedonian ascendance put all the big-name Greek city states on the back burner politically, if not so much culturally and economically?
I don’t want to excuse the truly epic appropriators of history by reference to the appropriations of the lesser ones(and the British empire and the contemporary nation state of Greece certainly qualify for those two roles, respectively); but it is a bit of a historical liberty for the contemporary Greece to treat its right to some Athenian artifacts as somehow natural and uncomplicated by a long history of various owners and potential owners getting squished.
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“Sir?”
“Will we get to experience multiple orgasms without a re–”
“without a refractory period?”
“I think I’d like that, sir”
Reposting:
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It is less impressive than you think
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The real one is ok, but you have to pay to see it, and you’re kept to a path well away from most of the stones.
Instead, go about 20 miles north to Avebury, where you can see a much more impressive stone circle, and walk up to the stones and touch them if you like. Plus, there’s a village with a pub in the middle of the circle, so you can have a pint while you look round.
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When I lived about ten miles from there I used to go to the festival and the solstices when you could walk in among the stones, I agree about Avebury. I would love to go to the Standing Stones of Stenness and the Orkney Neolithic site too.
Betty Bowers follows James Acaster??
I was at a life-drawing session there this weekend and took some time to admire the caryatids (storm Dennis prevented drawing them too). It is a strangely unattractive building.
The British didn’t really want the marbles either
https://research.britishmuseum.org/collectionimages/AN00063/AN00063085_001_l.jpg
Brexit makes me curious…
How many brits actually think it’s a good idea to leave? Why do they want to leave?
What is the situation in britain right now and what’s the overall pro-contra stats? Anyone know this?
The Hellenic Navy is not too shabby, considering.
Not quite in the same league as the Royal Navy, but then again not that far apart either.
If my inner armchair admiral channelled my inner rostrum football manager I’d say it’d be a bit like a English Football League Championship club (from the top six) taking on a Premier League club (that’s always just a point or two away from facing relegation).
Point taken, with the only response being that keeping the artifacts may arguably may be considered the act of empire. But that may be too broad a definition.
OMG, that is priceless. I should be so fortunate as to have half that author’s wit.
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early 19th century engravings aren’t suitable for twitter-- too much information for too low a bandwidth. Ideally, it would be scanned at 600 dpi.
The text reads:
Castlereagh stands like an insinuating salesman, displaying to John Bull a collection of broken statues. John, a stout ‘cit’, in patched but neat clothes, stands directed to the left, his hand deep in his coat-pocket, gazing in dismay at a battered and broken Hercules to which Castlereagh points. Three starving children tug at his coat; an elder boy, emaciated and ragged, stands behind; an infant in the arms of a plump Mrs. Bull is sucking a bare bone. An older boy and girl stand behind, the latter holds by the frock a screaming child who tries to run forward. They exclaim together: “Don’t buy them Daddy! we don’t want Stones. Give us Bread! Give us Bread! Give us Bread!” Castlereagh, who has a star on his coat, and wears long full trousers gathered at the ankle (cf. No. 12840), says: “Here’s a Bargain for you Johnny! Only £35.000!! I have bought them on purpose for you! Never think of Bread when you can have Stones so wonderous Cheap!!” At his feet is a paper: ‘Ministerial Economy a Farce of 1816 by … & Castlereagh’. John answers: “I don’t think somehow that these here Stones are perfect! & had rather not buy them at present—Trade is very Bad & provision very Dear & my family can’t Eat Stones!—Besides they say it will cost £40,000 to build a place to put them in— As the Turks gave them to our Ambassador in his official Capacity for little or Nothing & solely out of compliment to the British Nation—I think he should not charge such an Enormous price for packing and Carriage!!” At his feet: ‘Good News for J Bull—In consequence of the Glorious Peace—Increase of Taxes & Decrease of Trade, the Quartern Loaf will be sold in future for one Shilling & Sixpence.’ An enormously fat and disreputable woman of the Billingsgate or St. Giles type, stands on the right, scowling towards Castlereagh; she says: “Let him take his Stones back again to the Turks we dont want them in this Country!!” Beside her is a little ragged boy. At her feet is a large document: ‘The Grand National Stone Buildg of the Strand or Waterloo Bridge impeded & delay’d by an Enormous & illiberal Demand for the purchase of the Crown land in the Savoy’. On the wall is a bill: ‘Just Publish’d Speculation!! or Travels in the East in search of ruinous fragments of Stone by Lord Elgin’. The more prominent statues, a Hercules, a much mutilated Venus, and Mercury holding a caduceus have no relation to the marbles; a fragment from waist to thighs is mere burlesque; behind these are fragments of frieze based on the originals which had been displayed to the public by Lord Elgin on account of the controversy on their merits. There are also a shattered capital of a pillar, and small fragments of ornament.
c. June 1816
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I mean, at the very least at least Greece has an extremely valid geographic claim to wanting the marbles back in the same place that they originally came from, all cultural and sociopolitical concerns aside.
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Near that place and safely in an air-conditioned and alarmed/guarded museum, to be exact. Nobody actually wants to put them back where they were to begin with (on the Parthenon).
