Two letters in the Guardian's letter's page, Wednesday 01 June 2022. Could we prefix the headline with #WednesdayWisdom?

It is dishonourable for the British Museum to keep the Parthenon marbles.

It should make no difference whether the Parthenon marbles were “removed from the rubble” or not. They must be given back. If our neighbours’ house is on fire while on holiday, and we rescue their valuables, we should surely give them back when they return. To keep them would be dishonourable.
David Simmonds
Woking, Surrey

As a secondhand bookseller, I arrived at the home of Harold Plenderleith shortly before he died in 1997 to buy books. He had been chief conservator with the British Museum, and I made the mistake of asking him for his views on repatriation of the Parthenon marbles (Greece rebuts British Museum claim Parthenon marbles were ‘removed from rubble’, 23 May). “Never!” he replied, “Never! We looked after the marbles when they would have been destroyed [by pollution?] had they stayed in Athens.” His vehemence tired him so much that he had to go back to bed. I assumed that this was the line taken by all staff at the time, and daren’t ask about the notorious scrubbing incident that took place while he was a junior in the early 1930s.

Shortly after, Glasgow Museums returned a ghost dance shirt to the Sioux community and my friend, the poet Anna Crowe, wrote a poem on it including the words: “We still believe some form of words, / or ritual will come between / us and another’s anger. Not seeing / that our invisibility’s what’s required.” Those at the British Museum still struggling to retain the Parthenon marbles should take heed.
Margaret Squires
St Andrews, Fife

It is one of the wonders of antiquity and reunifying it would be an act of reverence, writes Alf Dubs.Letter published in the Guardian 27 February 2022.

It was with some surprise that I read the reunification of parts of one of the greatest works of classic antiquity described as a herald of “cultural cleansing” in a letter (16 February) on the question of the return of the Parthenon sculptures.

The removal of 75 metres of the Parthenon’s frieze, 15 metopes and 17 pedimental figures from Athens represents at best an abuse of power by Lord Elgin, and at worst an act of vandalism and spoliation that far exceeded the bounds of the dubious permission granted to him to “take away some pieces of stone” which were “preserved in rubble” around the Parthenon.