Athena Atherton

My first visit to the British Museum was at the ripe young age of eight and consisted of my mother pointing to various artefacts and reminding me that they had been ‘stolen’. When we reached the most famous exhibit, the so-called ‘Elgin Marbles’, my mother’s lecturing took a personal turn. The marbles that groups of tourists were passing by without a second glance were part of a collection belonging to the Parthenon in Athens. The beautiful, solemn Caryatids were torn from their sisters in the Erechthieon and shipped back to London in 1803. These marbles were part of a greater patchwork that unlocked our Greek cultural heritage, and they belonged in our country. The term ‘stolen’ that my mother repeated so often, suddenly had a deeper meaning when I looked up at the somber faces of the Caryatids. Since then, the British Museum has held none of its original appeal.

The importance of art and history in the formation of national identity and cultural heritage is paramount. As such, the destruction and theft of art in temples, shrines and palaces has been a strategy of war and colonisation since the first human civilisations. In 1897, the British Army sent 1,200 troops to invade Benin City (in modern day Nigeria) as retribution for the killing of a British ambassador, now often argued as a mere excuse to dominate the city and destroy its military resistance. This raid tore the city to the ground; the palaces, temples and homes of the citizens of Benin were looted and the treasures disseminated amongst the soldiers. Citizens were forced to recognise the political and military domination of the British by not only witnessing the massacres of their fellow citizens but also the removal of their cultural and religious property. This permanently reminded them of their subordination and eliminated any potential insurrections through the erosion of cultural unity. Today, there are over 4000 artefacts belonging to the collection of the Benin Bronzes, 700 of which are in the British Museum.

The obvious moral qualms attached to the theft of cultural property existed prior to the modern age. Over 2000 years ago, Cicero evocatively condemned a Roman praetor, who had stolen various cultural artefacts from Sicily for personal gain, for his immoral and unjust theft, introducing the modern concepts of cultural property and its intrinsic links to heritage and history. Cicero’s case summed up a debate that characterises modern post colonial relations in many countries today: where does cultural property belong, with the ‘finder’ or the creator?

Clearly, the immorality of looting is not a modern concept; those who opposed Lord Elgin in the early nineteenth century (most notably Lord Byron), often cited Cicero as an authority to express their dissatisfaction. Although Parliament ruled in favour of buying the Marbles, the morality and legality of the purchase was debated beforehand, and the existence of sustained opposition to the method of Elgin’s acquisition poses a question for the modern debate. If people believed Elgin’s methods to be morally dubious and there has been a case for repatriation for over 200 years, what current justifications does the British Museum have to keep other countries’ national and cultural property?

According to my mother and her fellow Greeks, Elgin ‘stole’ the Parthenon Marbles. However, this terminology has morally dubious connotations and is thus largely contested by advocates for the British Museum. They argue that Elgin was gifted the marbles by the contemporary Athenian authorities, to ensure their preservation.

However, in 1803, Athens had been ruled by the Ottoman dynasty since 1453, and Greece did not gain independence until 1832. Thus, the Turkish authorities that had ‘gifted’ Elgin the marbles were arguably not as concerned with the Parthenon’s exclusively Greek cultural significance. Upon the formation of modern Greece, diplomatic relations with Britain were quickly concerned with the return of the marbles, indicating the significance of their return to Greek cultural memory and pride. Moreover, many historians have contested the legality of their removal, which in my opinion increases the legitimacy of the terminology such as ‘stolen’. Using Cicero as a guide, Elgin’s removal of the marbles without explicit permission and for personal gain, can be condemned as immoral and thus the marbles deserve repatriation.

Furthermore, advocates for Elgin and the British Museum argue that he took the marbles for their own preservation. The Museum continues to refuse repatriation based on this. For many Greeks, including myself, this argument is one of the most offensive. Lord Elgin, in his quest for preservation, succeeded in destroying much of the Parthenon when he carved out half of the remaining statues and shipped them to adorn his private home in Scotland. Only when hit with financial ruin did Lord Elgin, the mighty preserver, sell his private collection to Parliament. Despite all claims of preservation, a cleaning team in 1939 caused irreparable damage to the statues. Under the command of the director of the Museum, the unskilled team cleaned the statues with ammonia and scraped ‘dirt’ with copper tools, permanently disfiguring the statues and removing sections fundamental to our understanding of the statues. The so-called ‘dirt’ was in fact 2000 year old paint. This scandal was promptly covered up, with no one knowing the extent of the damage until a Greek conservationist team were finally permitted to study their heritage in the late 1990s.

In 1982, the Greeks formally requested their restitution through Unesco, stressing the issue of poor preservation. Yet the British Museum danced around allegations of the damage, calling them “gross exaggerations”. Ten years later it seemed these “gross exaggerations” were true. The retention of the marbles based on the grounds of preservation is simply an ode to Western colonial arrogance. Britain’s claim rests on the shaky assumption that they are better protectors of Greek heritage than the Greeks themselves, but the damage done by their bleaching tells a different story. The integrity compromised by the cover up tells a different story. The horror of the Greek conservationist team upon discovering that their 2000 year old heritage had been irreparably damaged by the hands of its ‘protectors’, tells a different story.

So who does cultural property belong to? I believe that those who created monuments that have inspired generations of art across the globe, are entitled to display them in their own countries. The primary justification of the British Museum, aside from the aforementioned, is that the Greek statues, the Benin Bronzes, the Egyptian artefacts and all the rest, belong in a cosmopolitan museum where everyone from around the world can have a chance to view them. But this denies aspiring archaeologists, historians, and artists in these native countries an opportunity to learn, by holding ransom their cultural and historical property: the keys to their past. If 90% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s (known) cultural property is in Western museums, how can its children ever truly understand their past without physically seeing it in their own museums?

Fortunately, one Western government has understood they must begin to amend the crimes of their past. In 2017, Macron declared “African cultural heritage can no longer remain a prisoner of European museums”. Since then, France has begun to return hostage artefacts, such as the Benin Bronzes. On the other hand, the British government has emphatically rejected any repatriation. In 2014, following George Clooney’s public support for the return of the marbles, Boris Johnson described him as “advocating nothing less than a Hitlerian agenda for London’s cultural treasures”. I hope the irony of “London’s cultural treasures” is not lost. Johnson’s position has not changed since then; the Greeks have requested the marbles be returned by the 25th of March 2021 and yet it seems that they will stay put. One can only hope that someday, morality in art and culture triumphs political pettiness.

If you’re interested in reading more about the topic, I found the book ‘Who Owns History’ by Geoffrey Robertson to be very helpful and informative.