Tact and Diplomacy – put down your invective
“You don’t agree with me. You just saying you agree with me. Go on, leave. English - Pah!”
He was a big guy, full beard and belly resting tight up against the steering wheel of his taxi. We were stopped at the bottom of the hill below the Acropolis where he had taken me when I flagged down his cab outside my hotel. I don’t know which hurt more, him calling me English or his refusal to take agreement when he wanted a fight about the Marbles.
That was thirty years ago. I had three hours before my next meeting and in the uncharacteristic rain of an Athenian spring afternoon I had decided to see the Parthenon. Already firmly convinced of the rightness of Greece’s demands to return the Marbles, I wanted to see the place from where they had been prised by an apparently avaricious Lord Elgin (who sold them to Parliament for £35,000 – a colossal sum in the early nineteenth century).
The offence? the crime? occurred at the time of the Ottoman Empire’s rule over Greece. It is clear that something underhand occurred in the alleged granting of permission by Sultan Selim III. The ‘firman’ – a document granting permission to the Earl of Elgin for the removal of the Marbles – appears to both contemporary and modern scholars to be either a forgery or not to authorise the degree to which the Parthenon suffered desecration. It is said that the commander of the Ottoman fort (of which the Parthenon was then a part) had to be bribed extensively over the eleven year period (!) that the removal of the Marbles took place.
Images of dusty workmen turning up on a Saturday afternoon with a donkey cart and some picks to hack off some murals are way off mark. This was an industrial scale operation. It is worth seeing the Marbles at the British Museum not just for their beauty but also to appreciate their size and weight. Removing them, packing and transporting them would have been as difficult as installing them had to have been.
I am not an historian, an archaeologist or committed to fashionable causes for the sake of it. That day, my first visit to the Parthenon changed my agreement with Greek demands to firm conviction that it was the right thing to do. Some years later, at the time of the crisis of Greek austerity, I wrote to the then Foreign Secretary, William Hague, asking that the Marbles be returned as a gesture of solidarity with the Greek people who were suffering so badly at the hands of economics and politicians. I argued that this would mean so much to that country’s spirit and cost us so little. No answer was the stern reply.
That April afternoon the rain swept across the exposed hill driving all but the hardiest tourists to the cafes below the hill. You have to pick your way carefully over the uneven stones of the Parthenon – doubly hazardous when slick with newly-wet dust. After a while I just sat at the edge of the building looking outwards. I was struck by the tons of stone that were scattered around. Pieces of carved columns, huge squares of marble and rubble by the lorry-load. Elgin hadn’t been the only vandal. But how much of the obvious damage done to the building had he caused?
https://inews.co.uk/culture/victorian-vandals-did-more-damage-to-elgin-marbles-than-greece-pollution-1337727
The comments below from Wikipedia shows the dichotomy at the heart of Elgin’s actions. He seemed single-minded about ‘saving’ the friezes at any cost to the structure:
To facilitate transport by Elgin, the columns' capitals and many metopes and frieze slabs were either hacked off the main structure or sawn and sliced into smaller sections, causing irreparable damage to the Parthenon itself. One shipload of marbles on board the British brig Mentor was caught in a storm off Cape Matapan in southern Greece and sank near Kythera, but was salvaged at the Earl's personal expense, it took two years to bring them to the surface.
Later he tries his utmost to engage the best craftsmen to restore the Marbles. (Canova was a ROCK STAR!)
Elgin consulted with Italian sculptor Antonio Canova in 1803 about how best to restore the marbles. Canova was considered by some to be the world's best sculptural restorer of the time; Elgin wrote that Canova declined to work on the marbles for fear of damaging them further.
There have been several attempts by the British Museum to maintain the Marbles and restore them to their pristine original state (right into the 20th century) – all very commendable, if unsuccessful. The Greek record in restoring the remaining parts of the frieze has been far more impressive.
Again, from Wikipedia:
As early as 1838, scientist Michael Faraday was asked to provide a solution to the problem of the deteriorating surface of the marbles. The outcome is described in the following excerpt from the letter he sent to Henry Milman, a commissioner for the National Gallery.
The marbles generally were very dirty ... from a deposit of dust and soot. ... I found the body of the marble beneath the surface white. ... The application of water, applied by a sponge or soft cloth, removed the coarsest dirt. ... The use of fine, gritty powder, with the water and rubbing, though it more quickly removed the upper dirt, left much embedded in the cellular surface of the marble. I then applied alkalies [sic] , both carbonated and caustic; these quickened the loosening of the surface dirt ... but they fell far short of restoring the marble surface to its proper hue and state of cleanliness. I finally used dilute nitric acid, and even this failed. ... The examination has made me despair of the possibility of presenting the marbles in the British Museum in that state of purity and whiteness which they originally possessed.
The pros and cons can – and do - cover pages of the internet. Those who favour keeping the Marbles in Britain make the case that it is only here that they can be properly cared for – although caring for them is not something that has been very successful to date. They say the Marbles are now part of Britain’s cultural heritage and to return them would open the floodgates for other artefacts to be reclaimed by other countries, affecting museums all over the world. Those who say send them back talk of the rape of the ancient monument – one in a long series of colonial plunderings. And they are much more concerned with the emotional and cultural impact of the Marbles being isolated from the rest of the Parthenon’s remains.
The Greeks have built a magnificent museum to house the artefacts recovered from the Acropolis. The building itself is a work of art and its exhibits are breathtaking. The history of destructive attacks on the Parthenon and the other monuments on the hill are well documented. It is obvious that blaming Elgin alone for the state of the Parthenon today is ludicrous and counter-productive – not that this excuses the results of his (and other people’s) arrogant efforts to ‘save’ Greek treasures from the people of Greece.
A solution to the fate of the Marbles has to be approached in an entirely different way from the fiery verbal challenges which have raged in recent years - or the two sides are condemned to repeat their well-known debating points forever without a conclusion or resolution. Forget history. Forget who said Elgin could have them (or maybe didn’t) . It doesn’t matter and will get us nowhere whether law and justice are on one side or the other. What matters is today. It is without doubt fruitless to continue the argument as it is currently being conducted. It is pretty much a predictable, scripted row.
The strategy to send the Marbles home must be based on morality and conducted in a supremely diplomatic fashion. The national pride of two countries, the will to do the right thing and the simple fact that there is now a fine home for them in Athens are the building blocks for a resolution. In Athens they will sit, bathed in the sunlight of the Acropolis, alongside the other artefacts that tell its story back to the times of their creator, Phidias.
Today, it is no longer relevant who did, or didn’t do, what - unless your objective is to prolong this debate into the twenty second century. Neither side is going to win on the current arguments. Facts exist, of course, but so many facts are also open to interpretation and Elgin cannot stand up and give evidence. There is no over-arching authority who will decide this. Certainly, English law does not seem to provide fertile ground on which to base a case requiring the Marbles’ return.
Law and compulsion aside, it would show immense generosity of spirit if Britain were to send the Marbles home. The simple fact is that they are totemic to the Greeks and although they have been inspirational to see in London, housing them in Athens would no longer mean a reduction in people who could see them. People travel for lesser reasons and the Marbles are one of the wonders of the ancient world. Above all, keep governments out of it until they have to pay the bill. And try to persuade everyone that a period of calm would be conducive to their return, since loss of face now features heavily in this battle of wills. I say persuading great diplomats to fashion a solution removed from blame and removed from shame, is our only hope.
The Marbles were and are always, Greek – that is irrefutable. Generosity by the British will show us as true neighbours and friends to another European country, whatever we think about the European Union. Phidias’ creation will never rest easy until it is united in the sun of Athens – and neither will we.
Ian Hunter OBE
Comments powered by CComment